Creatures at an Exposition
by Metal Dog
Summary: The Doctor makes a new friend in 2010, who helps him thwart an attempted invasion by the Rutan in 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.


**Creatures at an Exposition**

_by Matthew Schoaff_

There it was, that blue box again.

The first time I remembered seeing it, I was driving near the Police Station in North Tonawanda. They're always doing something weirdly historical up that way, what with the carousel factory museum right down the road, but it's usually involving carrousel animals. I'd never seen a "Police Box" before, and I'd had no idea what it was.

But then I saw it again.

The second time I remembered seeing the box, it was on the side of the road. No, scratch that, it was near a pond by a farm I pass every Thursday; the one where they raise bison. I like bison. Sometimes I think about stopping in there to see how much it would cost for a few steaks. More than beef, I'm sure. So as I glanced over at the sign advertising fresh bison meat and contemplated whether or not I should jot down the phone number, I noticed the blue box by the pond.

You know, that might not have been the second time. Maybe I saw it more times than that. It looked so familiar when I first noticed it, it was like I had seen it before but never really _looked_ at it. Maybe I had a vague memory of seeing one somewhere a long time ago and it just never occurred to me before that there was something weird about this blue box.

I was starting to wonder if it was some kind of holiday decoration when I saw it again on the side of the road, about a mile down. I was so surprised that I slowed the truck down to 30 as I passed it, even though the limit was 55. Of course, at that time, it hadn't occurred to me that it could possibly be the same box, moving about on its own. That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

The next time I was sure that I saw the blue box, it was in my back yard. There it was. I had just poured myself a cup of coffee, and I looked outside to see how the day would be, and there it was.

There was no snow on it, and it had snowed pretty well overnight, so it looked even more out-of-place than seemed possible. I held my coffee mug in front of my mouth, not drinking it, trying to wrestle my mind around the idea that the blue box was HERE.

---

Ok, time to back up a bit. I need to explain a few things about the box. It's not just a box, not really. It's so much more than just a box.

After I had seen it on the roadside, I became curious. I thought I saw it at least two more times that day, but couldn't be sure. The next day I didn't see it at all, and I was so distracted by looking for it that I made two deliveries to the wrong places and had to double back. My boss hadn't seemed to happy when I got back to the warehouse late, and my attempt at an explanation had made him less happy. When I got home, my wife kept me busy preparing for our daughter's birthday party, and I forgot about the blue box for a while. But eventually the excited princess went to bed, clutching the early birthday present that she had extorted as a bribe in exchange for her willing concessions to the whims of morpheus, and my exhausted wife soon followed suit. As soon as they went to bed, I turned on my computer. I double-clicked on my browser icon, and started to search for the blue box.

After about half an hour on various websites, I learned that Police Boxes were once a common sight in England, before constables had portable radios. It was just a phone mounted on a big box, in which foot patrolmen could lock up criminals temporarily, and there had been many styles of these phone boxes. But none of the pictures I found looked like the Police Box that I had seen.

Then I found it. On an historical website about Police Boxes, a reference was made to a folkloric "phantom phonebox" that had supposedly been seen all over the world. I searched for a while and found a link to an archive of images in a filesharing folder on a private server.

Very few of the images were from digital cameras; most were scans of old photographs or drawings. There were even a few photographs that dated back to the earliest days of photography, and an oil painting that resembled the work of Rembrandt. Most of them were pictures of the same Police Box that I had seen. The same one, exactly. Several of the pictures also had people in them; always a man, sometimes a man and a woman. One picture had four people in it, each in a different style of attire.

As I was going through the list of files and copying them to my hard drive, I came across a snippet of video. A placard that appeared at the beginning of the movie identified the cameraman as Thomas Edison, and the location as the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York. Of course this got my attention: that Exposition had been held less than twenty miles from my home, although it was over a hundred years ago. The film started with President William McKinley giving a speech with Vice President Roosevelt at his side, but then the screen froze and zoomed in on a blurry Police Box in the background.

I had to know more.

There was one picture in the collection that did not have the Police Box in it. It was titled and it appeared to have been photo-shopped. It was a large tree that looked like it was made of silver, and the sky behind it was a vivid orange. Standing by the tree was one of the men from the other photos. He was tall with curly hair, a burgundy coat, and a ridiculously long scarf. In one hand he held a hat as he waved, smiling, to the camera. At his feet, between his feet and the silvery tree trunk, was some kind of robot dog. It was probably a radio-controlled toy. But as strange as the colors were in the sky and the tree, the man and toy appeared to have their natural colors. It was weird, so I kept it and transferred it with the rest of the files.

---

Sometime around two in the morning, I ran out of pictures to look at. Police Boxes in the city; Police Boxes in the desert... I even dreamed about Police Boxes, when I finally managed to sleep. I was dreaming that I went inside, and it wasn't just a box, it was the Emerald City of Oz. There was even a horse of a different color, and just as Dorothy and I were about to climb into the carriage, something woke me.

It was still dark outside, and I laid there listening, wondering why I was already awake. But I couldn't go back to sleep. So I climbed out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and went downstairs to make coffee. And there it was.

At first I thought that maybe I was still dreaming, or that I was hallucinating. But there it was, as big as life, the lights from its windows illuminating the tiny flakes of snow that were blowing around it. I took a sip of my coffee and burned my lip. It was still too hot, but at least I knew that I was awake, and the Police Box was still there in my back yard.

My boots were near the back door. I stepped into them, not bothering to lace them up, and opened the door. It was bitter cold outside, and the deep snow fell into my open boots as I approached the box. Then I noticed the footprints.

A man's footprints led from the door on the box and towards the gate. I followed the footprints; the moonlight reflecting on the snow was all the light I needed to see where they went. They went down my driveway and around the house. As I followed, I suddenly came to a terrifying realization: the footprints led to my front door. Whoever had come out of that box was in my house, and he was alone with my wife and daughter.

My hands were shaking, either from fear or cold or both. I fumbled with the door, and it opened easily. It was unlocked, although I was certain that I had locked it. I crept inside as silently as I could. Where could he be? I held my breath and listened... what was that? A faint noise coming from upstairs! I envisioned a psychopath slowly dismembering my child and broke into a cold sweat.

There it was again! I forced myself up the stairs. What was I doing? I had no weapon; how could I hope to fight a serial killer with my bare hands? I reached the top of the stairs and listened carefully. From my daughter's room I heard a faint snore. From the computer room I heard the faint whine of the cooling fan (which I would have to replace someday). And then from my bedroom I heard the noise again. I pressed my ear to the door and heard my wife giggle, and a man's voice softly murmuring. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I stepped back from the door in shock. Then I heard the chair in the computer room squeak, and I forgot all about whatever was happening in my bedroom.

I spun around and ran down the hall. The door to the computer room quickly opened and shut, and the shadow of a man stood there. I stopped. There was a wall switch to my right, which I flipped on. He squinted into the light, and I recognized him immediately from one of the photos that I had found online.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Don't you know?" he replied, in a British accent.

"No." I spat, "What are you doing in my house?"

"I just brought you home." He smiled, and continued, "And apparently a moment too soon. Sorry about that."

"What?"

"You'll see. Good bye now. It'll be nice to meet you." He started walking down the stairs.

"Hey! Wait!" I ran to the top of the stairs, but he was already gone. I could see the front door closing behind him. I walked back to the bedroom door. It was locked, and as I tried the handle, I heard shushing sounds from inside. I knocked on the door. The door opened, and a man stepped out. As he and I looked eye-to-eye, it became very clear to both of us that he was... me.

"Oh, hello! What am I still doing here?" the other me said.

I don't entirely recall what my response was to this, but I'm fairly certain that it made little sense. A strange sound filled my ears, and I suddenly remembered that it was the same sound that had woken me. It sounded like a razor blade scraping along the length of a guitar string, back and forth and up and down. It got louder and louder until I couldn't take it anymore, and I reached out towards my doppelganger. I think I grabbed him by his shirt, but then... that's the last thing I remember from that night.

I awoke to bright sunlight shining through my bedroom window. I put on my glasses and looked for my robe, but couldn't find it. On the big chair near the closet I noticed my pants draped across an arm, and the shirt I had put on early that morning when I got up to make coffee and... and I suddenly remembered. It seemed like a dream until that moment, but if it was a dream then why was the shirt on the chair?

Then I noticed something else. There were two shirts, and two pairs of pants. I only owned one shirt like this... and the pants... the belt was still in the belt loops. I only owned one brown belt, but somehow I now had two.

I picked up both pairs of pants, and started to empty the pockets into two separate, but identical piles. I had two wallets with matching ID, exact copies of my credit cards, pictures of my wife and daughter... the few bills inside even had the same serial numbers. Two pens. Two lighters. Two keyrings. That was when I found the discrepancy. His keyring had one extra key.

It was a small, round key that I did not recognize. I took it off the keyring, put on the pair of jeans that I was now certain were my own and not the property of my duplicate, and slipped the key into the small fifth pocket on my hip. Then I put on my shirt (which was mine?) and headed downstairs.

---

Sitting at the kitchen table, reading my morning newspaper, wearing my robe and drinking my coffee from my favorite mug, was my double. My wife and daughter sat across from him, staring at me as I entered the room, frozen in fear. I tried to reassure them without making a sound, but the other me spoke first.

"Sweetie," he said, addressing my wife, "I'm sorry that I'm so noisy. I never realized how loudly I snore." He put down the newspaper and turned to face me. "And if it weren't for time travel, I never would have known. Good morning, sleepyhead!"

"Time travel."

"Time travel!"

I sat in a kitchen chair next to him. Me. Whoever. I sat in a chair next to that thing that looked like me. I must have gotten too close because he jerked away suddenly. "Careful!" he said, "We can't touch. Burns a hole in the fabric of the universe, or something like that."

"Then why are you here? Who was that guy who brought you here? What's up with the Police Box?" Suddenly remembering, I bolted to the kitchen window. A square depression in the snow provided the evidence that it had really been there. "It's gone!"

"Gone? What is?" he asked.

"The Police Box! It was in the back yard!"

My double stood up from my chair and looked me in the eye. "We landed in the living room."

-=Chapter Two=-

Mary couldn't wait to tell her grandparents about how she got a second daddy for her birthday, but I swore her to secrecy as I drove her over to their house. I knew that she would tell them anyways, but I hoped that they would just think that it was the product of the wild imagination of an eight-year-old girl. The other me (who had started referring to me as "me the former" and himself as "me the latter") was back at the house. He said that he was just glad to be home, where nothing weird ever happened. Well, not until now, that is. I wanted to sit down with him alone and find out everything I could.

He had been time traveling, but where did he go? The past? The future? Did he know the winning lottery numbers? And when, supposedly, was I going to leave on this trip through time? What should I bring with me? How long would I be gone? He didn't look any older than me; maybe he had just taken a short trip. And we were wearing the same clothes, so maybe it was going to happen today? But we had both agreed that Mary should go ahead and visit my in-laws for the day, because they were already expecting her. He could answer my questions when I got back.

And there it was, that blue box again.

I drove down the street, dropped Mary off, and drove right back down the street, and there it was on the corner where it hadn't been a few minutes before. I pulled the car over and parked in front of it. In the bright sunlight, I could see flaws and cracks in the blue paint, and I reached out to feel its texture. It was warm, and it seemed to hum. I stood in front of it and read the little sign on the door: "_Police Telephone. Free for use of public. Advice and assistance obtainable immediately_." Advice and assistance, that's what I needed.

I pulled open the little door; an antique-looking telephone was mounted to the inside of it. I picked up the receiver and heard nothing. I didn't really expect to hear anything on that phone. But just as I was about to hang it up, I heard a voice.

"'Ello?"

I snatched the receiver back and pressed it to my ear. "Hello? Hello?"

"The telephone doesn't work. Not hooked up to anything, you know." The voice was behind me. I turned quickly and my boots shot out from under me on the icy curb. I swung for a moment on the end of the telephone wire, then sat down heavily in the snow in front of the Police Box. A man stood over me, the same man I had seen in my hallway just a few hours ago.

"Can I help you with something?" he said, in that slightly confusing British accent. "You look like you might need some help."

I scrambled to my feet. "Who are you?" I asked.

"Funny you asking me that. You're the one messing about with my TARDIS."

"You were in my house last night. I mean early this morning. A few hours ago."

"Was I? Really? I suppose I'll have a good reason for being there..."

"You were there to drop me off. And you did. And he's there right now."

"Ah! ... OH! So there's two of you now? Funny thing, paradox. I remember one time there were two of me and Peri said... no, wait, it was Tegan... Well, I guess you had to be there. It was funny at the time." he started to chuckle slightly. "'Pair-o'-Docs' indeed! Heh heh..."

"Listen, this is serious. You're some kind of time traveler, right? This is your time machine, this Police Box, right?"

"Yes, absolutely. You want serious, you can have serious. Or would you rather have Sirius?"

"What?"

"Sirius. The planet. Not to be confused with Sirius, the star. Completely different parts of the Universe, those two. This thing travels through Space, too. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. TARDIS." He started to explain the nature of the machine, but I stopped listening.

I sat back down in the snow. Okay so I found my time traveler, and he's a crackpot. As he babbled about his time machine I took the time to assess him. He was pale and skinny, and his clothes didn't quite fit right. They seemed a bit out of style, too, like he had gotten them from a second-hand store. And there was something about his eyes...

"Are you an alien?" I suddenly asked, interrupting him in the middle of a sentence. "Or just from the future?"

He took a second to consider, then answered solemnly, "Both. Does that scare you?"

"No. I read a lot of sci-fi."

"Science fiction is mostly nonsensical gobbledygook. It'll rot your brain."

"So's the real world. So what do we do now?"

"We? I know what I'm going to do now."

"What?"

"It's four o'clock. Tea."

---

Strictly speaking, it wasn't tea time yet. But I figured that with that accent of his, he probably kept his clocks set to Greenwich Time, so I didn't argue as I followed him into the Police Box. Well, it wasn't the Emerald City of Oz, but it was significantly larger on the inside, and it looked about as much like "alien from the future" as one could imagine. At first I thought that it was one big room, but after two cups of tea I needed to find a lavatory, and he opened a door to reveal a gently curving hallway. "The facilities are the first door on the left. The kitchen is the second door, if you suddenly feel a compulsion to do dishes or bake some more biscuits."

I opened the first door. It was a smallish room with a toilet and a sink, both of which seemed to have grown out of the floor. I opened the second door to find a room twice as large, with a sink overfilled with dirty dishes and a refrigerator that seemed to date back to the 1960's. There was a triangular table with three mismatched chairs; a teacup with lipstick on the rim sat half-full on a saucer on the table. I opened the third door to find a room that was half again as large as the kitchen, and the next room was much larger...

"Fibbonacci" I said.

"What's that?" he called out from the main room.

"These rooms remind me of the chambers of the nautilus. It's a sea creature that grows its shell in accordance with the Fibbonacci sequence of numbers. Each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. Each new chamber of the shell is as large as the previous two chambers combined. And the curving hallway, and all the rooms being on the left..."

He stood in the door of the hallway, looking at me, astonished. "Of all the people who have ever been in the TARDIS..." he beamed a huge smile that almost scared me with its toothiness, "Bra-_VO_! Now where do you suppose the hallway ends?"

"At the largest chamber, obviously. In a nautilus shell, that would be where the creature lives."

"Which is this room. The control room. The hallway loops around and comes out over there." He pointed across the control room to another door that was only barely discernible.

"But..."

"But?" His eyes started to glow in anticipation.

"The hallway doesn't curve enough to come out over there."

"Relative Dimensions. They say Space isn't curved enough to come out where it does, but it does. And once your race figures out the why and how of that mystery, you'll be building time machines of your own. Not as nice as this one, obviously."

"Obviously. You know, I don't even know your name."

"Nor I yours. I'm the Doctor."

"They call me Metal."

---

Somehow I found myself elbow-deep in the Doctor's kitchen sink, scrubbing teacups and plates and saucers. I washed, he dried. Every piece of china seemed to have come from a different era. Some of it was probably worth a fortune, but when I asked him about it, the Doctor picked up a filthy platter and showed it to me.

"You see this platter? Nice, isn't it? I found it at a yard sale in the year 2555. Cost me two uber-pesos. I don't even know what an uber-peso's worth in today's money, but I doubt it's much. I don't even know what year this is, anyways."

"Twenty ten."

"Eleventy-teen to you too, sir."

"No, the year. It's Twenty Ten. Or Two Thousand and Ten, if you prefer. I like Twenty Ten."

"Ah!" He scraped the chocolate frosting from the platter, revealing a Presidential Seal. "This is from his second term. See the hologram?" The Doctor wiggled the platter back and forth. "Looks just like him!" Then he flipped the platter over and wiggled it some more, "Oh, wait. This guy wasn't really a President, he just played one on TV, I think." He flung the platter into a corner. "See? Worthless!"

---

"So what kind of name is Metal, anyways?" We were in one of the medium-sized rooms of the TARDIS, playing pool on an octagonal billiards table with holographic billiard balls. They were very realistic, but you could only touch them with the cue sticks.

"Not my real name. My real name's Matthew Schoaff. Never liked it much. How about you? What kind of name is 'The Doctor'?"

"Enough about me, let's talk about you. You know, 'Schoaff' means 'Thumb' in Glessadomnian. Glessadomnese. The Glessadomn language. Which is fitting, because you're about the size of one."

"A Glessadomn?"

"No, one of their thumbs. Greatest hitchikers in the galaxy, the Glessadomns. Why 'Metal'?

"'Metal Dog'. It's my sign in the chinese zodiac. So I used it as a screen name for video games. Got shortened to Metal."

"Metal Dog."

"Yes. I was born in 1970."

"Your screen name is Metal Dog."

"Yes."

The Doctor jumped up from the stool where he had been sitting. "Of course! That's why you've met me! I'm looking for you!"

I stepped back a bit, but found myself against a wall. "You're looking for me?"

"Yes, I am. And you know it." He suddenly looked very angry, and stood very close to me. I could feel his breath on my face, and it seemed strangely cold. I had the feeling he could freeze me with his words while he burned me with his eyes. Those alien eyes. "You've been lying to me. You know exactly who I am, and you're not just the college dropout lorry driver you appear to be. _Who are you?_"

---

Now, I'm a lot bigger than the Doctor, and I could probably take him in a fight. You know, if I really had to. Really, I could. He was about my height, but really scrawny and very young. But he _scared_ me. So when he told me to go to the control room and sit down, I went to the control room, and I sat down. He waved something in front of me; it looked like a small flashlight but the light was blue and it made a high-pitched whistling sound.

"What's that?"

"I'll ask the questions around here, mister! This happens to be the most versatile tool in the universe. A sonic screwdriver!" He brandished it like a baton, and stirred the air.

"A screwdriver?" I was a bit nervous. I didn't want to be screwdriven.

"Of course! It wouldn't be much use if it were a sonic hammer, now, would it? You can't scan bio readings with a sonic hammer. Now, where was I?"

"Scanning my bio readings with your sonic screwdriver."

"Ah, HA! How do you know that's what I was doing?"

"Ummmmm.... lucky guess?"

"A lucky guess indeed!" He stared into my eyes, not blinking. I didn't blink, either. A few seconds passed.

"You're not blinking," he said.

"Neither are you. I thought maybe it was a game." I blinked.

"Ah, HA! You blinked!" He walked away, laughing to himself. Then he bent over the controls of the TARDIS and poked at a few buttons. He looked at the screen and frowned, then poked a few more buttons. Then he poked them again, more vigorously. Then he hit the control panel and yelled, "Come on, give me something..." He sighed and turned back to me, "You, sir, are not an alien."

"Well, thank goodness," I said. "Does that mean I'm free to go?"

"Of course you're free to go! I never said that you weren't. But, uh..."

"But?"

"I need your help. I need to know how you got those pictures."

"Oh! I found them in somebody's filesharing folder. But how do you know I downloaded those pictures?"

"You posted them online in a public forum."

"No, I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"Nope. Not yet, anyways."

"Not even one?"

"Not even one."

"Not yet?"

"Well, I was going to."

"When?"

"Probably today."

"Then I know what I have to do." He ran over to the controls and furiously punched buttons, leaping about like a frantic monkey. He pulled a lever, turned a crank, then looked at me and said, "Hold on!"

---

He pushed a button and suddenly my chair was no longer beneath me. I landed hard on the metal grates that served as a floor. The room stopped lurching after a few seconds, and as I pulled myself to my feet he bolted out the door. "Wait here!" he yelled. So I waited. I dusted off my parka and found my gloves which had fallen from my pocket. Then I started to wonder where I had left my hat; it was in the TARDIS somewhere. Of course, the billiards room! I went back down the hallway, retrieved my hat, and stepped back into the control room just as the Doctor came running back in from outside. His shoes were snowy, and he was rubbing his arms to warm up.

"Where'd you go?" I asked.

"Your house. Last night. Back yard. Had to delete those pictures from your hard drive. Ran into myself, too."

"Weird, isn't it?" I chuckled.

"Oh, I've done it before. Just don't touch yourself. I mean, don't touch your other self. The release of temporal energy burns a tiny hole in the fabric of the universe."

"Yes, my other self told me."

"And I told him. Just now." He looked at me pointedly.

"Of course."

"And while I was in there, I was able to trace the download, and I know where you got those pictures. Want to come along?"

"Sure, why not? This is a time machine, so I've got plenty of time, right?"

"Oh, by the way," he said, as he fiddled with the controls, "that bio reading I took of you? You should quit smoking." He punched a button and the room lurched again. This time I was able to catch myself on the railing. It was kind of like being in a tilt-a-whirl while standing, and that may have been why I felt nauseous. Or maybe it was the Doctor's words making me nervous.

-=Chapter Three=-

As we flew through space and time, the ride became less turbulent, and I made my way over to the chair. "So, tell me, Doctor. What's so important about those pictures I downloaded?"

"Well..." he said, as he moved about the control console, making slight adjustments, "It wasn't the pictures. It was that movie."

"The one from Edison? In 1901?"

"Yes, you see..." the TARDIS lurched suddenly, and he grabbed a control to steady our flight, "it's inaccurate. Theodore Roosevelt wasn't supposed to be there. Neither were you."

"Me?"

"Didn't you notice? In the video, you were standing near the Temple of Music, talking on your mobile phone."

"No, I just saw the Police... I mean, the TARDIS. I only watched it briefly."

"Well, you were there. And apparently so was I. Somewhere."

"Maybe if we could get our hands on the whole movie, we can see what happened. Are you sure Roosevelt wasn't supposed to be there? I thought he was."

"Roosevelt didn't arrive until after McKinley had been shot. And in regards to finding the entire movie..." the TARDIS came to a landing, with a large clunking noise, "we're here."

The Doctor stepped out the doors of the TARDIS, and I followed. We were in a large, dark room with a concrete floor. A single light bulb hung directly over the TARDIS, but its light was too dim to pierce the darkness. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver thingy and held it in front of him. As it glowed and whistled, he turned back and forth, until the pitch of the whistle changed slightly.

"This way!" he said. I closed the door to the TARDIS and started to follow him, but we had only gone a few steps before I was startled by a loud clanging noise behind me. A metal cage fell from the ceiling and landed around the TARDIS. It started to hum, and it smelled of ozone so I knew that it had been electrified.

"_NO_!" the Doctor yelled, and threw himself at the cage. As his hands gripped the bars, his body became rigid. I pulled my hands inside the sleeves of my parka to insulate myself, wrapped my arms around his chest, and fell backwards, pulling him off the cage. He landed on top of me, then rolled off and groaned.

"Are you okay?" I said. He was unresponsive. I looked at his hands, and saw that they had been burned. I put my ear to his chest and heard him breathing, but then noticed that his heartbeat was strangely irregular. I moved my ear to the left side of his chest. His heart sounded normal, but there was another thumping that seemed to come from the other side of his chest. I moved around him and listened to that side, and heard another, very fast heartbeat. He had two hearts!

"Hear anything interesting?" he asked. I moved back, and he sat up.

"You've got two hearts." I said, astonished.

"I told you I was an alien. Well, alien to you. You're alien to me, too. How do you live with only one heart?" He felt his chest, and winced as his hands touched his shirt. "OW! My poor wittle hands!"

"You've burned them. Pretty badly, too, by the looks of them."

"So I see. Now... OW! _OW_!" he gripped the right side of his chest, "Oh, no. Not again. Not _now_!"

"What? What's happening?"

"Regeneration, I think. Or maybe not. Wait..." his hands started to glow yellow. I stepped back, not sure what to make of it. I was reminded of that movie from the eighties, when Bruce Leroy had to fight the Shogun of Harlem. After about half a second, the glow vanished, and his hands were healed. "Hell-_O_! That's new!" He seemed puzzled.

"What happened? How did you heal your hands?"

"Localized regeneration, I guess. Just my hands. I've heard of it, but it's never happened to me before."

"Regeneration?"

"It's a Time Lord thing, you wouldn't understand. I'm not sure I fully understand it, either, and I've done it plenty of times."

---

Time Lord? Okay, weird name for an alien species, but who was I to judge? At least I could pronounce it. I wondered if "Doctor" was really his name, or if his name was unpronounceable, or even worse, if his name meant something hilariously filthy in English. Like in the movie 'Alien Nation' when Matt Sikes was told that his last name meant "shit head" in the alien language. I laughed a bit at this thought.

"So now what do we do? Short out the cage somehow?"

"I need a minute to rest. That took a lot out of me. Don't worry, I'll think of something soon." He laid back down and closed his eyes.

I turned towards the caged TARDIS, and walked around it. There were no wires leading to the cage, so the power source was self-contained, somehow. This implied the use of batteries, but the charge had been too powerful for any small battery to impart. I looked at the base of the cage, because the bottom frame was the thickest part. Around the back of the TARDIS I saw a section of frame that looked slightly thicker than the rest. "Doctor! Over here!" He just mumbled in response. Then I noticed his sonic screwdriver laying on the floor near him. I walked over and picked it up. Upon close examination of this tool, I saw that it was far more complicated than I had imagined. Two dials, three buttons, and some sort of sliding thingy that I assumed was the trigger. I worked the slide up and down, and was rewarded with a glow and whistle. A tiny screen lit up and displayed some alien symbols that changed rapidly.

"Doctor, how do you work this thing? It looks complicated."

"Don't... touch..." he faded into unconsciousness.

"Sorry, Doc. I'm going to try." I walked back around to the back of the TARDIS and pointed the screwdriver at the thicker part of the cage. I activated it, and the symbols on the screen changed. I turned the top dial one notch, and tried again. The screen displayed the international "NO" symbol (a red circle with a line crossing it diagonally). I thought this was interesting... perhaps the symbol had alien origins? Wait a second... I turned the dial back and tried again, and looked carefully at the alien symbols displayed. Some of them were greek letters! I tried to remember what little I knew of greek letters, but most of that knowledge was tied to fraternity parties, and most of those parties had involved heavy drinking.

"Alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi omicron pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi psi omega." I recited. Didn't do much good, but in my college days that recitation would have given me a reprieve from hazing for a while.

"Mispronounced... mmmmmmm..." the Doctor mumbled. Maybe he wasn't completely unconscious, after all.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I muttered in response. "Silly Brits."

I turned the dial two settings this time, pointed it at the cage, and got another "NO" symbol. I turned it again. Another negative. I turned it back to the original setting, then tried the other dial. The whistling was louder and the blue glow was brighter... that one must control the power, I reasoned. I noticed that the screen was filled with more symbols than before, though, and there was also a flashing question mark. I tried touching the screen with my little finger, and the question mark expanded into what looked like a menu. The lower button lit up, and I pressed it. The menu scrolled down, and now the upper button lit as well. I pressed that button and the menu scrolled back up. Well, that made sense. I scrolled down through the menu, but I couldn't read any of the choices.

"Doctor, wake up. I have no idea how to work this thing."

His response was an inglorious fart. So, aliens fart. At least it made him seem more human. I continued to scroll through the menu. Wait! There was a symbol I recognized! A lightning bolt! I touched the middle button, and the menu closed. The dials moved by themselves, and the buttons lit sequentially from bottom to top. I pointed the screwdriver at the bulge in the cage's frame, held it at arm's length, squinted my eyes, and pulled the sliding trigger. A bolt of electricity seemed to shoot from the tip of the screwdriver, and the handle grew very warm. The lone light bulb flickered, then shattered, and electricity arced from the socket to the cage. Then, suddenly, it stopped. We were in absolute darkness, except for a green light that shone from the tiny screen on the screwdriver. The light shut off after a second had gone by.

I tried to make my way over to the Doctor in the darkness, but bumped into the cage. It was no longer electrified, thank goodness. Then I kicked the Doctor, accidentally, and he groaned.

"Oy!" he said.

"Doc! You okay?"

"Don't call me Doc. Give me that screwdriver. NOW!" I held out the sonic screwdriver, and he snatched it from my hand. I saw the green glow again as he deftly fiddled with the controls. "Ah, you've recharged it! Good thing, too. I forgot to plug it in last night."

"I recharged it?"

"Yep. Sucked up about 1.21 gigawatts in three seconds. Probably blacked out half of London in the process."

"We're in London?"

"Didn't I tell you? No, I guess I forgot. We're in London."

"Nice. I've always wanted to visit London."

"Well, we're here. What do you think of it so far?"

"Pfft. Tourist trap." I replied sarcastically.

"A trap! Of course!" I heard him jump to his feet. "It's a trap!"

"It's a trap!" I parroted, doing my best impression of Admiral Akbar from Return of the Jedi.

The Doctor laughed. "I love those movies! They're so funny! And yet, so true."

The Doctor reached through the cage and touched the side of the TARDIS. The light on top lit up, and a glow emanated from the little windows. "There we are. Parking lights. Should be able to see what we're doing, now."

"Doc..." he shot me a look "... I mean, Doctor... shouldn't we be worried about whoever set this trap?"

"I'd wager that your little power disruption should keep them busy for a while. Now help me get this cage." Together we were able to lift the cage above our heads, and carefully eased it over the top of the TARDIS. It fell to the floor with a resounding crash. The Doctor pulled a key from his pocket, and stepped towards the door of the TARDIS. He put the key in the lock and turned it.

I heard a loud click like a bolt being thrown back, and the TARDIS fell through a trap door. The Doctor jumped back as the TARDIS disappeared from sight. "NO! NOT AGAIN!"

I stood at the edge of the trap door and watched the lights of the TARDIS as it fell. It seemed to be falling down a curved shaft, and I heard it hit bottom after a second. "Don't worry; it didn't go far." I said. Just then, the trap door snapped shut again, and I heard the bolt being pushed back in place. It sounded like somebody had done it manually.

The Doctor stepped closer to me, by the trap door. "Steal my TARDIS, eh? I think not!" he aimed his screwdriver at the wooden trap door, but nothing happened right away.

Suddenly, the lights came on. They were blindingly bright, especially considering how dark it had just been. I squinted and looked around the room. It was HUGE. The walls were at least a hundred yards away, in any direction I looked. I looked up towards the ceiling, into those bright lights, and saw at least a dozen more cages dangling there, above seemingly random locations in the room. Worse yet, beneath each of those cages was another trap door, identical to the one we stood beside. I pulled a cigarette from the pack in my shirt pocket, and lit it.

The Doctor looked at me, disapprovingly. "Didn't I tell you to quit smoking? You should always listen to your Doctor, you know."

"Sorry, Doc." I dropped the cigarette atop the trap door and ground it out with the sole of my boot. "You're right, I should quit."

Just then, we heard a loud scraping sound coming from one side of the room. The Doctor and I turned to face the noise, and watched as one of the walls split open in the middle. Eight armed men in black suits came rushing through the opening, and leveled their weapons at us.

-=Chapter Four=-

A tall, fit black man followed the troops into the room. He was dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, and walked with a bit of a swagger. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving me, what with the bright lights and all, but after a few seconds I was sure that I recognized him.

"That's Barack Obama!" I whispered to the Doctor, our hands in the air.

"No, it isn't." he whispered back.

"Yes it is," I replied, my voice approaching the audible range. "That's the President!"

"No, it isn't," he replied. "It just looks like him. And when I say it, I mean 'it'. That's not even a human. None of them are."

"Very good, Doctor!" the Obama look-alike called out. Obviously he had heard us, despite the distance between us and him. "We can, uh, see now why our, uh, first attempts at invasion were so easily defeated. They had you to identify us. But, uh, that won't happen again, will it?"

"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded.

"You know who we are. And, uh, now we know who _you_ are. Time Lord."

"I don't know who you are. What first attempts?"

"Perhaps you don't recognize us, this time." Obama's features melted grotesquely, and then re-formed into the face of Theodore Roosevelt. "We assure you, good sir," he now had the voice of a New York socialite from the 19th century, "There is nobody else on the planet Earth who can recognize us for what we are. We shall rule this world, and its people will not realize it, until it is too late. For we speak softly, but they shall discover that we carry a very big stick."

The fake president strolled out of the big room, through the gigantic door. His agents quickly surrounded us, and with a few simple gestures, instructed us to leave the room in the same way. As they drew near, I could feel my hair standing on end, like there was way too much static in the air. It also got very cold. It was a long walk to the doorway, and as we walked, I noticed the Doctor counting his steps. I also noticed him slipping his sonic screwdriver up his sleeve. When we reached the door, more agents met us, and led us down a hallway. They stopped in front of a metal door with very large locks on it. The Doctor took a good look at the locks as we were ushered inside, and as it closed behind us I heard all of those locks click shut.

"Don't worry, Metal," he said, trying to sound confident. "I'll get us out of here. By the way, did you notice how they smelled? Lots of ozone in this place."

"I noticed that all of the Secret Service agents had the same face. Weird, huh?"

I looked around the room. There were no windows, but there was a single vent in the ceiling high above us. The walls were made of smooth metal, with tiny grooves running from top to bottom. Where the walls met the floor, there was a tiny groove, with hundreds of tiny holes regularly spaced along it.

"This isn't a jail cell," I said. "It isn't made for holding prisoners."

"What? Of course it is." The Doctor had his screwdriver out, and was trying his best to open the locks on the door. He wasn't having any luck, so far.

"We have a room like this in the warehouse where I work. Of course, our door doesn't have a lock on it. That would be silly."

"What kind of room is it?" he asked.

"It's a freezer," I answered, coldly.

---

Some time passed, and the Doctor eventually gave up on his attempts to open the door. His frustration turned to anger, and he put several fist-shaped dents in the walls, but to no avail. I re-evaluated my chances against him in a fight, and decided to never find out just how hard he could punch. He didn't complain about my smoking, though, so I tried to judge time by how many cigarettes I had smoked. The battery on my phone was dead, so I had no other way to tell the time (I've never liked wearing a watch). By my reckoning, about three hours passed before a hidden speaker crackled to life.

"Matthew Schoaff," the voice said. The voice sounded like Obama again. I looked in the direction the voice seemed to emanate from, and discerned a small cluster of tiny holes high up on one wall. "Matthew Schoaff, we are, uh, prepared to offer you a deal."

"What's the deal?" I asked. It couldn't hurt to ask, after all.

"You can, uh, leave right now. Go home and see your family."

"Uh, huh. And what do _you_ want?"

"Just walk away. Never seek out the Doctor again. We, uh, have a pill that you can take, that will make you, uh, forget everything about the Doctor."

I looked at the Doctor. He was looking at me. "You should do it," he said. "Just walk away, like he said. I'm sorry I brought you into this mess. You should just forget all about me."

"Listen to the Doctor, Matthew. Just walk away. Go home."

I thought about it for half a second. Really, I did. But then I yelled, "I ain't goin' nowhere! Can't believe I ever voted for you, you scum-sucking alien. I should've voted for the other guy!"

"Doesn't matter, they would have just copied him, instead." the Doctor chimed in. "Well, except that right now you'd be in a bigger war."

"Very well, Matthew," the Obama-like vocie continued. "You will die with the Doctor."

"STOP CALLING ME MATTHEW!" I yelled, at the top of my lungs. It echoed about in the small room, and hurt my ears. More quietly, I continued, "Only my mother calls me Matthew, and you're not my mama, Obama!"

That's when the vent started blowing cold air. It started getting very cold in there.

---

I lowered the earflaps on my hat, and put my gloves on. Then I zipped up my parka and pulled the hood over my head. The Doctor had renewed his interest in making dents in the wall, but all he managed to do was tire himself out. He slumped on the floor, seemingly defeated.

"I'm so sorry, Metal. There's nothing more I can do. I guess we're done for."

I lit a cigarette, fumbling with the lighter in my thick gloves. The pack was empty, so I pulled a full pack from one of my parka pockets. Then I lit the empty pack on fire. The plastic burned with a nasty smell while the thin cardboard was consumed quickly. As it smoldered, I threw on the butts from all of the cigarettes that I had smoked.

"What are you doing there? That won't keep us warm! And it smells terrible!"

"Do you find it annoying?"

"Yes, most definitely."

"Do _they_ find it annoying?"

"I'm certain of it." The Doctor thought for a moment. "Metal, you're a genius!" He started pulling various items from his pocket, and added them to the fire. A yo-yo. A deck of playing cards. A pair of 3D glasses. A stuffed teddy bear. A waxed-paper bag filled with some kind of sweets (I snatched one and ate it. It wasn't too bad. He said they were Jelly Babies, whatever those are). Then I made a sacrifice and threw in the full pack of cigarettes that I had planned on saving. The smoke from my little fire became more and more noxious, and we stepped away from it to stand by the door.

"Whatever you do," the Doctor warned, "don't touch them. They're electric."

We heard the locks turning, and readied ourselves. Two of the look-alike agents walked straight into the freezer, holding fire extinguishers. They didn't seem to notice us at all, but rather rushed straight to the little fire to put it out. We slipped into the hallway. It was empty. We ran down the corridor as fast as we could. The Doctor seemed surprised that I was able to keep up with him, and we soon found the end of the hallway. A quick wave of his screwdriver unlatched the gigantic sliding door, and we slipped through, slamming it shut behind us. He pointed the screwdriver at the door again, and a puff of smoke came from the latch. I think that he fused it shut somehow.

"Quickly!" the Doctor commanded, "Find that trap door!"

I ran towards the center of the room. The toppled cage had vanished, as had the cigarette that I had snuffed Was it that one? No. That one? No. I feared that the aliens had swept away all traces, but then I spotted a few flecks of tobacco. The Doctor ran over to join me.

"Which one is it?" he asked. "Is it this one?"

"Yes, I think so. Wait..." I ran over to the next trap door. "This one! Look, there's a bit of a scuff from my boot heel on the concrete."

The Doctor pointed his screwdriver at the trap door, scanning. "Yes! The TARDIS is close!"

Just then, the wall exploded. Several of the agents poured through the newly created opening, with the Obama replica close behind them. "Stop them!" he yelled, his famous face contorted in anger. He no longer sounded like Obama, though. His voice sounded more... alien. Like it was bubbling out of him.

The Doctor and I stood atop the trap door. He pointed his screwdriver down, and activated it. Nothing happened.

"Wood," he explained. "I'm not that good with wood."

---

The alien agents pointed their weapons at us. Although they looked like regular handguns, they fired beams of energy that narrowly missed us. My heart pounded with fear, and my hands were sweating. Then, suddenly, I heard the bolt click back, and we were falling.

The chute was lined with metal, but it was very smooth. I landed on top of the TARDIS, narrowly avoiding the beacon on its roof. The Doctor was already standing at its doors, trying frantically to open them. "Where's the key?" he cried. He stepped back and snapped his fingers, which accomplished nothing. He growled and pounded on the doors again. "C'mon old girl! It's me! Let me in!"

"Wait!" I said. "Look over there!"

He looked to where I was pointing. A laptop computer sat on a desk, about a dozen yards from the TARDIS. He ran over and snatched it up, yanking off a power cord and an ethernet cable. I took off my gloves and carefully lowered myself from the roof of the TARDIS. I pulled the key from my pocket; the key that I had found on my time-twin's keyring. It fit the TARDIS lock perfectly, and we tumbled inside, just as dozens of aliens started to fall from the various chutes in the ceiling. (I assumed that each chute connected to each of the trap doors, so it really hadn't mattered if we found the right trap door or not, but it was just as well that we had because the underground room was just as large as the room above.) Moments later, the TARDIS was in flight.

-=Chapter Five=-

"What year is it again?" the Doctor asked, as he leapt about the control room, flipping switches.

"Twenty-ten," I replied. "Why?"

"One hundred and nine years, then. One hundred and nine. One hundred and nine. I remember when I was one hundred and nine. Ah, to be young again!"

"What? You look younger than me. How old are you, anyways?"

"Closing in on a thousand. Oh! Oh, dear!"

"What, what's wrong?"

"I'm going to need a new journal soon. AH! I've got it!"

"Got what? Wait... a _thousand?_ You must be joking."

"I'm not joking. I don't age like you do. I regenerate."

"Regenerate?"

"When my body dies, I get a new one. But it isn't easy and... I'm running out of new bodies. _New subject_!" He looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Ok, new subject. So... they sent a ship here a hundred years ago. And then waited a hundred years to send another one. Why?"

"They're very busy losing a war. Oh! 1901! Fang Rock!"

"What?"

"I've met them before. Here on Earth. I remember thinking how strange it was that a Rutan battle-fleet would only dispatch a single scout, but now I understand." He turned away from me and made some adjustments to the controls, before pulling a lever. The room lurched about, and I grabbed a railing to steady myself.

"So where are we going? Their home planet? I don't have a hundred years to spare, you know."

"No, no, no. Don't be silly. I can travel faster than light. If we wanted to go there, we could be there in a few hours. But we're not going there."

"So?" I asked, leaning in.

"So what?"

"Sew buttons. _So where are we going?_"

"Ah! Sorry! Not where, but when!"

"When?"

"We're going to an Exposition!" The Doctor pulled another teddy bear from a pocket, and held it in front of his face. "Hello, remember me?" he said in a falsetto voice, waving its stuffed paw.

---

While I searched through the files on the laptop, the Doctor recharged my cellphone. "Here," he said, when he was finished, "I've added my number to your contacts list. Any luck?"

"Yup," I said. "Easy enough to find. Now I just clickity-click, and..." the movie started to play. There was no sound, of course.

There was the placard again. 1901. Buffalo. Pan-American Exposition. Thomas Edison.

The first person we saw was a thin man with dark hair. He looked at the camera with an expression of impatience, then marched towards and past the camera. He looked vaguely familiar. "Was that Tesla?" I asked.

"Yes, that's him." The Doctor said. "He looks mildly upset about something... I wonder what?"

The scene quickly changed. It became immediately apparent that the movie we were watching was made up of brief segments of many different films, all recorded at the exposition. There was the TARDIS, with Tesla standing beside it, examining it. Then the TARDIS from a different angle, with the Doctor standing inside, waving at the camera. The next scene was filmed from the bow of a canal boat that circled the Exposition grounds; the Doctor and I could be clearly seen, walking amongst the crowd. Then another segment from the boat, when it passed near where the TARDIS was parked. The light atop was flashing, and it slowly vanished, like a ghost.

"Is that what it looks like from the outside, when we travel?"

"Yes, it is. But look there: we're not in it." I could see the Doctor running towards the spot where the TARDIS had just been.

"Where am I?"

"There you are!" The scene had changed again, and it was an image of me, standing near that same spot. As we watched, the TARDIS faded back into existence. The door opened, and the screen went black for a second.

The next scene was familiar. President William McKinley was giving a speech in front of a large, majestic building. Theodore Roosevelt (who we now knew to be an alien) was at his side. The TARDIS was barely visible in the background, behind the crowd. I was looking to see if I could see myself in the shot when I noticed the Doctor standing in the crowd. "There you are!"

"Yes, but what am I doing there?" he pondered.

The movie skipped forward in time again. The next scene was chilling. though. President McKinley lay, mortally wounded, on the ground where he had just stood. A crowd of bystanders were pummeling the assassin, and Roosevelt was helping. When they finally pulled the assassin to his feet and dragged him away, we could see that it was the Doctor!

"That's not right," we said in unison.

---

Before we landed, the Doctor directed me down the hall to the wardrobe. I hung my parka and hat on a coat rack, and poked through the selection. One of the coats fell off its hangar, and when I picked it up I saw a tag inside. "Ignatz Schaaf," it read. I grabbed the coat and ran back to the control room.

"Did you know Ignatz Schaaf?" I asked. The Doctor was busy at the controls, and ignored me at first. "Doctor!"

"Eh, hmmm, what? Sorry."

"Ignatz Schaaf. The owner of this coat."

"Oh, yes. Nice kid. Met him on a boat somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. I was cold, so he loaned me his coat. Pity I never gave it back. Why?"

"He was my great-great-grandfather."

The Doctor looked stunned. "You have _got_ to be joking."

"No."

"But... but 'Schaaf' doesn't mean 'thumb' in Glessadomnian! Glessadomnese. Whatever. It means..." he snickered a bit, "never mind. Let's just say that it's a different body part entirely."

"You mean...?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"I said _never mind_."

My thoughts returned to my previous contemplation of the Doctor's real name. "So what does _your_ name mean?"

"What? You know, the Doctor. Person who helps people. Makes them better. And stuff."

"No, I mean your real name. Is it something terribly embarrassing or something?"

"Never mind that. Seriously. You don't want to know."

The TARDIS landed with a thud, interrupting our conversation. "We've arrived!" he said, with some relief.

---

The first thing that hit me, when we stepped out of the TARDIS, was the smell. A fine mixture of manure and human body odor curled my nose hairs. Then I noticed the clothes. Everybody was wearing an outfit that looked terribly uncomfortable, overly complicated, and probably way too warm for the sunny weather. That was another thing; when we stepped into the TARDIS on my in-laws' street, it was late February of 2010. Now, the Doctor informed me, it was mid-September of 1901, and it was much warmer out than it had been in that strange, empty warehouse in London (or wherever it was). I resisted the urge to take off my great-great-grandfather's coat, because I knew that my T-shirt and blue jeans would attract too much attention. For some reason, the crowds were walking past us, like we were invisible.

"Are we invisible?" I asked the Doctor, as he exited the TARDIS behind me and closed the door.

"Invisible? No. Inconspicuous? Yes. There's a perception filter that surrounds the TARDIS. Makes people look away and not think about it."

"_I_ noticed the TARDIS. I saw it on the side of the road at least three times before you - we - showed up in the back yard."

"Only three times, eh? I was stalking you for _weeks_. Maybe the perception filter worked pretty well, after all, eh? Anyways, I got the trajectory a bit wrong and showed up too early. Figured I'd bounce around and see the sights while I waited for you to find those pictures on the internet for me. Spent a lot of time at Niagara. Have you seen the waterfalls? Of course you have. Come on! Allonz... no, never mind. _Vamanos_!" The Doctor started walking before I could respond to his babbling.

---

I started to follow him, but the reality of it all was just so... real. The noise, the people. The smell.

I spotted a cart a little ways off, where a young lady was selling flowers. Thinking to head off the olfactory assault on my nasal passages, I headed that way. I suddenly realized that I had no money that I could spend in this century, but a search of my great-great-grandfather's pockets yielded a single coin. One side depicted a man named Friedrich I; the other simply read One Gulden. It also bore a date: 1856.

I wandered about the Exposition grounds for a while, awed by the sheer size of it all, hoping to find the Doctor. Everybody who lives in or near Buffalo knows about the Exposition... it was the last time our city held any importance on the national stage. But I had never imagined that it had been quite so chaotic. Hundreds of people roamed through the exhibits, which ranged from demonstrations of farm equipment to new scientific breakthroughs. I was near one such exhibit when a man approached me.

"Good sir, have you a watch?" he asked, excitedly, with a distinct German accent.

"No, I'm sorry," I replied, gesturing at my bare wrist. He didn't seem to understand, and then I realized that he meant a _pocket_ watch. I opened my great-great-grandfather's coat to reveal my t-shirt and blue jeans, "No watch pockets here."

He looked at my unusual attire, confused. "Are you one of the performers, perchance?" he asked.

"Uh... yes. I'm from the 'City of the Future' exhibit." I didn't know if there was such an exhibit, but I figured that it was as close to the truth as he could handle. "Everybody's going to be wearing clothes like this in a hundred years. And this," I pulled my cellphone from my pocket, "this is what telegraphs are going to look like."

"Fascinating! I should go see that exhibit later. I, myself, am an inventor, and I hope for my machine to be found in every household someday."

"Oh? What's it called?" I wondered if he had actually invented something that was in my household in the future.

"I call it..." he paused for dramatic effect, "The X-Ray!"

"Ooh!" I cooed. It was exactly the response he was hoping for.

"Now, sir, if you had a watch on your person, I could demonstrate this amazing device for you. But instead I shall simply describe its properties. I ask you sir, have you ever held your hand before a lamp, and seen the bones therein?"

"Why, yes, I have. Of course I have."

"Well, sir! X-Rays are very much like light, but they pass invisibly through any object! But now sir, you are asking yourself, if they are invisible, how do I know that they truly exist?"

"Hmmm..." I pretended to ponder this question, while scanning the crowd for the Doctor. I saw him still speaking with Thomas Edison, apparently examining his motion picture camera. "Well, I have just seen the marvels of Mister Edison's camera. Perhaps if the rays could be captured in photographic form..."

"Precisely! The X-Rays pass through solid objects, and leave upon the film..." he pulled out a few sample X-Ray images from beside the machine, "... a precise and accurate depiction of the _interior_ of the object, _without _opening the outer casing!"

"Amazing! Can you use it on people?"

"Yes, my good sir. In fact," he produced an X-Ray image of a hand, "_this_ is my wife's hand, as seen from the perspective of the invisible X-Ray."

"Amazing! Simply amazing! But I regret that my time is short. What is your name, sir? I shall come see you again sometime, and your incredible machine." I was doing my best to sound archaic, but I didn't want to get into any longer conversations for fear that I would use an unfamiliar word.

"Wilhelm Roentgen, Professor of Physics at the University of Munich."

"My name is Met... Mathias Schaaf." It was the name of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. I figured that it would make a fine alias.

"Ach! I should have known by your accent. I have known many Schaafs, and most of them came from Baden. You are from Baden, yes?"

"Um... yes." I was confused. My accent? I was speaking american english with a mid-atlantic accent, so far as I knew.

"If there is anything you need, you just ask. It is always good to meet fellow countrymen when traveling abroad."

"Well, actually, sir..." I pulled the Gulden from my pocket. "I found this coin recently, and I have no idea what it might be worth in today's currency."

His eyes lit up when he saw the coin. "A Gulden? It's been replaced with the Mark, now. But this one is worth about two Marks. I could direct you to a bank where they could exchange it for American dollars. But this coin, this particular coin..." he held the coin by the edges and examined the portrait, "this coin is rare. It is special! This was minted for the coronation of Friedrich the First, Grand Duke of Baden. You could probably get more for it from a collector of rare coins! Fortunately for you, there is such a person at this very Exposition!" He returned my coin, then rummaged about his stall and found a hand-drawn map of the Exposition. A tiny red "X" had been drawn upon it, presumably indicating my current position. He quickly explained to me how to find the exhibit of rare currencies from around the world, when suddenly I felt a hand upon my shoulder.

---

"Hell_-O_!" It was the Doctor.

"Oh, hello Doctor!" I was so relieved to see him again, I almost forgot my manners. "May I introduce Professor Wilhelm Roentgen of the Univeristy of Munich?" The Professor beamed at me.

"Oh, hello Professor!" The Doctor seemed overjoyed to make his acquaintance. "I've just been speaking with Mister Thomas Edison. Fascinating man. Are you aware that he has also been working with X-Rays? Both he and his... erm, _associate_, Nikola Tesla?"

"Yes," the Professor scowled, "I am aware of his research. He is one of my worst opponents on the practical use of X-Rays for medical research. He believes that X-Rays can damage living tissue, but nothing could be further from the truth."

"Yes, well..." the Doctor looked uncomfortable. "It depends on what _kind_ of living tissue, I think."

"Certainly, Doctor, all things in moderation..." I tried to interject. "Even sunlight can damage tissues if one is exposed to it excessively."

"Then perhaps you should get out of the sun, yes?" Professor Roentgen suggested, sounding slightly surly. "Perhaps you have had too much already?"

"Perhaps we have. Shall we?"

"We shall." I replied. The Doctor walked briskly towards one of the large buildings, and I followed after him.

---

"Interesting friends you're making," he observed.

"That was weird. He really thought that I was German! I don't even speak German."

"You do now. Gift of the TARDIS. It creates a telepathic link, and translates everything you say and hear. And it does it so subtly that it's hard to notice when it's happening."

"So that's how you speak English? Is that why you sound British, because the TARDIS makes you sound like you speak English English as opposed to American English?"

"That's not a bad theory. Let's go with that, shall we?"

"So what does your language really sound like? I noticed that some of the symbols on the screwdriver were the same as greek letters."

He suddenly stopped walking and turned to face me. He reached out to my face, and placed two fingers on my left temple. Then he spoke. I can't reproduce the words he said, but it didn't sound greek to me. He removed his hand.

"So that's what... what's your language called?"

"Gallifreyan."

"So that's what Gallifreyan sounds like."

"Yup."

"Stick with the British."

"Will do." He looked me over and then said, "so what's with the coin?"

"I found it in my pocket. Professor Roentgen said it was rare. I was thinking that I could exchange it for some real money."

"What for?" He seemed suspicious of my intentions.

"Well, for one thing, I'm hungry."

"Pfft. I take you a hundred years back in time and the first thing you want to do is eat. You look like you could afford to miss a meal or two. C'mon, there's aliens to catch!" He started walking again. As we crossed a bridge, I noticed a canal boat passing beneath us, with Edison standing in the bow, his motion picture camera mounted upon a makeshift tripod. Tesla sat behind him, watching him operate the camera. I looked down at them and noticed that Tesla was not paying that close of attention to Edison, though; he was enthralled by something to his left. I glanced in that direction and saw that he was looking at the TARDIS.

-=Chapter Six=-

"So you know who those aliens are?" I asked, as we walked rapidly through the crowds at the Pan-American Exposition. "The Rutans? Tell me about them."

"The Rutan Host. They like the cold, and they like electricity. Which explains why they like Buffalo, especially in 1901." the Doctor strode on, never seeming to tire.

"The City of Lights," I said, looking around at the various buildings. The sun shone brightly on the hundreds of light bulbs that decorated the buildings. "We're going to have to come back at night, so we can see this all lit up. But it isn't very cold out."

"No, you're right. It's too hot for Rutans. We'll definitely have to wait until nightfall before they come out, which means that right now they're hiding somewhere nice and cold. We just have to find them."

"So, back to the subject at hand..."

"The Rutans?"

"No. Food." We were passing by a stand where a man was cooking up hamburgers. A sign advertised them as "The Original Hamburg Sandwiches," and my mouth was watering.

The Doctor turned up his nose. "I don't eat meat."

"So get a veggieburger. C'mon, I'll break my Baden Gulden and buy lunch for us both."

He sighed. "They haven't invented the veggieburger yet. They haven't invented cheeseburgers yet, either, so don't get any ideas about new suggestions for the menu. And you don't want to spend that coin."

"Aw, c'mon Doc! I'm starving over here. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday!"

"There's food on the TARDIS, you know."

"Your fridge contains exactly two packets of ketchup and one overripe banana with a greasy black peel. And an empty milk bottle."

The Doctor looked shocked. "I'm out of milk? Oh, dear, that won't do at all." He changed direction and began walking quickly in a new direction.

"Where are we going now?" I asked.

"To find a cow."

---

Somehow I ended up volunteering to carry the bucket of warm milk back to the TARDIS. The Doctor carried a bushel of fresh vegetables. I still wasn't sure how he managed to connive the handlers at the animal exhibit to let us have the milk for free, but I was pretty sure that he had simply stolen the vegetables while nobody was looking. Still, it had been a learning experience, as I had never milked a cow before. It was easier than I had expected, but my back ached, and the weight of the bucket wasn't helping much. I soon fell behind the faster-walking Gallifreyan.

Then I heard it. The sound of a razor on a guitar string. The sound of the TARDIS. I looked ahead and saw the Doctor break into a run, vegetables flying out of the bushel with every leaping bound. Soon he had nothing more than an empty bushel, which he discarded. In the distance I could see the TARDIS vanishing. And then it was gone.

Gone.

It took a second to sink in. Our only way out of this smelly century had just vanished into thin air. My only way home. I sat down, next to the milk bucket. Gone. I would never see my wife and daughter again. I would never watch television again, or surf the internet, or eat Buffalo wings. I would never again know the simple pleasure of driving down a highway with the radio blaring. The TARDIS was gone.

The Doctor came and sat beside me. He looked even more despondent than I felt. "It's gone." he said, simply. "Gone, gone, gone."

A song by Franz Ferdinand decided to pop into my head. "You're never going home, like Ulysses, woo-oo-ooh..." I sang, absent-mindedly.

"Well, we might as well drink the milk." He grabbed the bucket and lifted it to his lips. Streams of milkfat poured down his cheeks as he greedily chugged the warm liquid.

"It's hot out. I'm going to get some water, instead." I staggered to my feet.

"Good luck with that," the Doctor said, "The water isn't as clean as you're used to, in the 21st Century."

"I don't care, so long as it's cold."

The Doctor put down the bucket and sat upright. "Cold water! Of course!" He had a milk moustache that covered half of his face, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. "Let's go catch some Rutans!"

I crawled to my feet, dusted myself off, and looked at him incredulously. "They just stole the TARDIS, and you still want to go after them?"

He jumped to his feet. "Now, more than ever! Come on!" He took off at a run, heading towards the canal that circled the Exposition grounds. I groaned and ran after him.

---

"So how many alien species _are_ there, anyways?" I asked, as we walked along the canal, peering into the water.

"Within a dozen light-years of Earth?" He placed his finger on his pursed lips. "At least a dozen... dozen."

"A dozen?"

"A dozen dozen. A gross."

"_A hundred and forty-four?_"

"Yep, about that. Give or take a dozen."

"A dozen dozen, give or take a dozen."

"Sounds like a lot, dozen it?" He gave me a grin that looked so monstrously huge, I thought he was about to bite my head off.

"Don't do that," I said.

"What?" He smiled even wider, if that was possible.

"Don't smile like that. You give me the creeps."

---

"So... back to the Rutans." I was starting to get tired. We had walked nearly halfway around the Exposition, following the canal. Boats went by, packed with festival-goers. Children trailed their fingers in the water. Lovers kissed. Boatmen scowled at us for walking. I wondered why we didn't take a boat.

"Rutans, Rutans, Rutans. Nasty blobby things. Green."

"Green?"

"And glowy! Rather disturbing, actually. Very hard to kill, too. And extremely dangerous. The last time I encountered one on Earth... everybody died." He stopped in his tracks, a very sad look on his face. But then just as suddenly he burst into a laugh, "But then Leela saved the day, didn't she? Shot him full of holes with a cannon full of Jelly Babies!" He reached in his pocket and withdrew a small paper bag filled with the candies. He carefully selected one and smiled at me. "Jelly Babies burn very hot. Lots of calories." He bit the Jelly Baby's head off, in a very crocodile-like manner. I wondered if his race had evolved from lizards. I wondered if he was even a mammal.

"Tell me about _your_ race, Doctor."

He looked at me, steel in his eyes. "What do you want to know?" he asked. I could tell that he wasn't going to volunteer any information.

"Time Lords. Seems like a funny name, to me. Like a name that somebody made up. What are you really called?"

"Gallifreyan. But not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords. _Were_, I mean. Not all were Time Lords." The sad look was back, only sadder and more profound.

"So where is your planet, Gallifrey? Is it near Earth? Is it one of the dozen dozen?"

"No. It's... It's nowhere."

"Nowhere?"

"It used to be near the center of this galaxy. Mutter's Spiral, that's what it's called. Not the Milky Way. Although I _like_ Milky Way; it's a much better name. My grandfather was on the naming committee, though, and _he_ wanted to name it after his wife, my grandmother."

"Well that would have been funny. If the Galaxy was named after your grandmother." I started to chuckle.

"It was," he said, dead-pan serious. "My grandmother's name was Mutter."

---

Somewhere along the western side of the Exposition grounds, behind the Indian Village, we found what we were looking for. Electrical lines hung overhead from telegraph poles, crossing the canal. The sun was starting to get low in the sky, and in its reddish glow we could clearly see a shiny object attached to the wires near the pole.

"Alright, c'mon, give me a boost," he said. "Big guy like you, should be able to throw me halfway up there."

I took him up on the challenge. With his right foot in my hand, I waited until I saw his left foot leave the ground. Then I _heaved_ with all of my might, hoping to send the Doctor skywards. As I fell backwards into the mud, I heard a splash.

"Argh! Blarg!" The Doctor flailed and splashed in the middle of the canal. "I can't swim!"

"What do you mean, you can't swim? Hang on, I'm coming!" I picked myself up and walked to the edge of the canal. I transferred everything from my pants pockets to my coat pockets, then took off my coat. Then I set about un-tying my boots.

"You know, I'm drowning out here." the Doctor said, indignantly. He was somehow staying afloat, though, despite his claim to be unable to swim.

"Yeah, sure you are. Can your feet touch bottom?"

He dipped a bit into the water, then bounced up with a smile. "Yep!"

"Yeah, I thought so. Hang on, I'll come help you out."

"Wait," he said. "My feet just touched something other than bottom." He suddenly looked very scared, "Matt! Get out of here! _Go_!"

One boot was still tied; the other was on my foot, but the laces hung loose. I grabbed my coat with one hand and reached out to the Doctor with the other. I could see something glowing green beneath the water. "Come on, Doc! Grab my hand!"

The Doctor lunged for my hand, and floundered in the water. He started dog-paddling furtively, and quickly reached the side of the canal. As he grasped my hand, he thanked me, and I started to haul him out of the water. Then I noticed the green glow right beside him. Something that looked like a flimsy tentacle rose above the water's surface, and touched the Doctor. I felt an electric current pass through us as I lost consciousness.

---

I awoke in a chair. It wasn't a very comfortable chair, and I was stuck to it. It was like I had sat in a puddle of glue. I was in a smallish room with green walls... no, wait, it was just green light. I was in a smallish room facing a wall that was illuminated with a faint green light.

"You awake back there?" I heard the Doctor's voice behind me.

"Yeah. I've been glued to the chair." I patted my coat pockets; everything seemed to be there. My boot was still untied. I had a splitting headache but seemed otherwise unhurt. "You know, these aliens must not have a high opinion of me."

"Why do you say that?" the Doctor asked.

"They glued my pants to the chair. Just my pants."

"Well, don't tell _them_ that."

"Who?"

"The Rutans. Above us."

I looked up.

-=Chapter Seven=-

"What are they doing on the ceiling?" I asked, terrified that one of the huge, glowing green globules would fall on us.

"Mating, I think. I've never seen it done like this before, though."

There were five of the blobs hanging from the high ceiling in the otherwise dark room. One was in the center, while the other four, smaller blobs were stationed in each of the corners. Sparks of electricity flowed between them sporadically, but I soon discerned a rhythm. As the rhythm quickened, though, the sparks grew larger, until large arcs of wild current were filling the air that separated them. I was reminded of a Tesla coil, and once again wondered where that enigmatic inventor had wandered off to.

As I watched, the four smaller blobs grew larger, then each one split in two. The new blobs positioned themselves into a new pattern, with each blob the same distance from each other.

"_Very_ interesting," I said. "Parthenogenesis? Or does the one in the center contribute DNA?"

"Parthenogenesis. That's a big word for a lorry driver." He turned around completely in his chair, so I knew that he hadn't been glued down like I was. Or was I?

"I looked it up recently." As I spoke, I felt the 'glue' that was holding me to my seat and discovered that it was dried mud, from when I fell by the canal. "There was something that happened in a sci-fi show, and I was trying to understand how a clone of a person could be played by a different actor, so that I could, well, try to help explain it to the guys on my internet forum. I forget the rest of the details, though."

The Doctor snorted. "It was probably more like petri-dish parthenogenesis, if there is such a thing."

"Hey," I responded, defensively, "it's sci-fi! Anything can happen so long as the technobabble sounds good!" He started laughing, but he was trying to hold it in.

"Aw, c'mon, it sounded like a reasonable explanation to _me_." I whined. "So what if it wasn't really parthenogenesis!"

"It's..." he held his sides, "It's not that! That actually happened to me once! Well, not really, but..." he laughed even harder.

Well, then I started to laugh. And the fact that I was laughing as well seemed to free the Doctor from whatever constraint he had placed upon himself. We both roared in laughter, tears streaming from our faces, rolling on the floor. We slapped each other on the back (and boy, did he ever slap _hard_!) and gave each other one of those 'half-hugs' that men give other men. I noticed that we had rolled close to the door, and that it was ajar.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" the voice suddenly rang out from above. It was that same, strange, bubbly voice that I had heard from the Obama look-alike back in my own time.

"We're _laughing_!" the Doctor replied, still laughing. I was done laughing, though. I took one crawling step towards the door.

"WHAT IS LAUGHING?" asked the alien.

"Oh, you wouldn't understand," he said, wiping the tears from his face.

"'We laugh because it hurts'," I said. The Doctor looked at me, quizzically. "Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land." I explained. He nodded, knowingly. It kind of made sense that he would have read something like that. I moved slightly closer to the door.

"YOU ARE CORRECT. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND LAUGHING."

"Well, here's something _I_ don't understand," the Doctor said, popping to his feet. "Why are Rutans trying to take over the States, of all places?"

"WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF US, HUMAN?"

"Oh, I know a lot about Rutans," he said, as he gestured towards the door. I quietly slipped through it. Through the doorway, I could hear him continue, "In fact, right now, one of my other selves is killing a Rutan, on the other side of this world. It wasn't easy, if I recall correctly."

"YOU SPEAK IN RIDDLES, HUMAN."

"Oh, please stop calling me that. It's considered one of the worst insults amongst my people."

I moved further into the house we had found ourselves in, and the Doctor's voice became less audible. It was pitch black, except for the faint green glow emanating from the closet behind me, and I kicked a chair leg. Then I kicked a table at the same time I bumped into its corner with my crotch. I choked back the temporary pain as I made some assumptions: I was in the Dining Room of whatever house we were in. We were probably very near the Exposition, so if I could find a window, I could probably let in some light.

"TIME LORD?!?!?!??!?" I heard the Rutan yell, apparently surprised. I walked towards where I believed an outer wall to be, waving my hands in front of me. Within moments, my hands touched curtains. I drew them back and took in the spectacle of the Exposition grounds lit up for the night. It was breathtaking.

"_TIME LORD!?!?!??!?!" _The Rutan cried again, snapping me back to reality. I had to open the window. My hands moved all around the window frame, but I couldn't find a latch. How the heck did they open windows in 1901? Well, I knew one way. I picked up the chair I had kicked earlier, and flung it at the window. The chair shattered, but the thick glass didn't even crack. Suddenly, the door to the closet flung wide open, and the Doctor ran past me.

"Come ON!" he yelled to me. "Allonz Y! Vamanos! Git along little doggie!" He kept yelling, as he bounded towards the stairs, and up them. A green glow filled the room, accompanied by the sound of electrical sparks. I ran after him.

I wondered, at this time, just why it is that when people in horror movies are confronted with a monster, they run someplace from which they can not escape? I remembered so many movies I had watched when I wanted to yell at the characters, "Why are you running _up_stairs?" But I didn't yell that at the Doctor. I just followed him.

---

We kept running up stairs until we had reached the third level of the house. The Doctor collapsed, out of breath. I tried to keep my feet as I listened to my heart pound.

"Why..." I started to ask, "Why are we..." but I was too winded to finish my sentence.

"Why are we upstairs?" he asked. "It's hot up here."

It took me a moment to realize that those were not two incongruous sentences. The heat from the day had warmed the upper floors of the house quite well, and it would be a while before it dissipated. "But," I took a deep breath, "what happens later? When it cools down up here?"

The Doctor looked at me and smiled. "Then we _really_ start having fun!"

---

The battery on my cell-phone was dead again. Not that it mattered; I doubted that I could get a signal in 1901. The Doctor was off in a bedroom, breaking stuff, while I stood guard at the top of the stairs. I could hear the Rutans down below us, slithering about and crackling with electricity, but so far they hadn't attempted to climb the stairs.

"Here, hold this." The Doctor returned to the landing, offering me a chair leg with a piece of bedspread wrapped tightly around it. He held another one in his other hand.

"What do I do with this?" I asked.

"Light it. You still have your lighter, I presume? I noticed that you haven't had a cigarette in a while. Good for you." He beamed.

"Well, Doctor, I threw all of my cigarettes on that fire in the freezer, remember?" I lit the makeshift torches, and we stood side-by-side at the top of the stairs.

"Ah, yes, sorry about that. But it's for the best, you know."

"Yeah, I know, I know. I was actually planning on quitting in a couple of weeks."

"In a couple of weeks?"

"Yeah, on my Fortieth birthday." I smiled, self-consciously. "Starting to get old."

"Naaaah, Forty isn't old!" He gave me a playful punch on the shoulder. It hurt, but I didn't show it.

"Old enough to finally quit smoking. I thought it would be easy. Of course, I didn't expect to get run into a bunch of electric boogers from outer space."

"Yes, well, about that," he burnished his torch like a weapon, "it's time we wiped them off the face of the Earth. Get it? Wiped?" He smiled again, and wiggled his faint eyebrows.

"Yeah, we'll show 'em they can't pick on us!" I smiled back, with fake enthusiasm.

The smile vanished from the Doctor's face. "I don't get it."

"Pick? Boogers?"

"Nope. Nada. Zilch." He looked at me, blankly, then turned away to face the stairs.

"Never mind. So what's the plan? Burn the house down with the Rutans inside?"

He turned, smiled, and pointed at me. "Had you going! Pick! That's hilarious!" He doubled over with fake laughter, then suddenly stood upright. "That's a terrible idea. Burn the house down? Are you crazy?"

"Well, they call me Mad Matt."

"I thought they called you Metal"

"They call me a lot of things."

He pointed at me. "You..." he paused, "You go first. Just wave your torch around and don't get electrocuted."

I looked down the stairs, my heart in my throat. I could feel it thumping with fear and adrenaline. "Me? First?" I croaked, my mouth suddenly dry.

"Just kidding. I'll go first." He bounded down the stairs, whooping, "_RuuuuuTANS_! Come out and _play_!"

I tightened my grip on the sputtering torch, and followed him... slowly.

---

The Doctor was waiting for me at the second floor landing. There was no sign of the Rutans, yet. By the light of my torch, I could see something on the floor of a room, the door to which had been left ajar. It looked black and shiny, with strangely shaped lumps.

"Look, Doctor, in there!" I whispered, and gestured towards the room.

He stepped to the door of the room. "Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear."

"What is it?"

"The former occupant of the house, I'd wager. Or what's left of him. They took him apart."

"Ew." I grunted, with disgust. "Why?"

"Rutan metamorphological technique requires a detailed analysis of the race they intend to impersonate. Once they figure out the basics, it's an easy matter to change faces and voices to impersonate individuals. But they're probably using this poor fellow's face to blend in with the crowd."

"Very observant, Doctor." the voice came from behind me. I spun around, and there at the top of the stairs stood the fake Theodore Roosevelt. "Yes, we know who you are. Our scout sent us a detailed report, before we felt it die. We have felt the deaths of many Rutan today."

I held my torch in front of me, and stepped back away from it. It turned towards me.

"And who are you?" the Rutan asked, stepping closer.

"Me? I'm just a delivery man. Got a package for ya." I remembered a move from fencing class, twenty years forgotten. My feet moved quickly beneath me, and I leapt through the air towards him, my torch held out before me like my old epee. The flaming end struck him in the chest, which instantly melted away to reveal glowing, green flesh. It screamed in pain, and fell backwards down the stairs. I teetered on the edge, and would have followed it if the Doctor hadn't grabbed my coat.

"_Touche_'!" he exclaimed, as I watched my torch fall down the stairs. The Rutans scattered from the flame. I couldn't tell which one had been impersonating Roosevelt any more; they all looked alike. The torch landed under a window, beneath the edge of the long drapes. It only took a few seconds before they were ablaze.

"Oops," I said.

---

We ran down the stairs as fast as we could, gravity helping more than a little as we stumbled over each others' feet. I reached the front door first, and threw it open. A man was standing there. He reached out towards me, his eyes and mouth glowing green. Suddenly, a torch flew past my head, singeing my beard, and struck the Rutan in the face. We scampered out the door and ran down the street. I looked back to see the house start to fill with flame.

"Doctor! What do we do now?"

"Keep... on... running!" He was way ahead of me now, and I forced myself to run faster.

"Where?" I asked, as soon as I started to close the gap.

"I don't know!" He changed direction suddenly, and I slipped on the wet cobblestones, twisting my ankle. The fire was starting to draw onlookers, and I could hear a bell ringing in the distance. The Fire Brigade was on its way.

"Doctor! Come back!" I sat in the street, holding my ankle.

"Oh, do you need a doctor?" A young woman scurried to my side. She was astonishingly pretty, and was dressed in a very formal outfit.

"Leave him be, Mary," a man in a tuxedo chided her. "He's clearly a vagabond, judging by his attire."

"_Oy_! That's my friend!" The Doctor said, as he appeared behind the man.

"Another one! Perhaps they had something to do with this fire?" The man confronted the Doctor. "Well, answer me, or you'll answer to the police!"

"Oh, Roswell! Leave them alone!" the young lady entreated. "They haven't done anything!"

"Oh, I think we'll be lettin' the Judge be the judge o' tha'." someone with a thick, Irish accent said. I turned to see a man in an old-fashioned police uniform walking towards us, spinning a billy club idly in his hands. He looked like one of those Keystone cops that used to chase Buster Keaton around in those old movies. I almost burst out laughing at the walking stereotype.

"Constable! You must listen to me!" The Doctor stepped between the officer and me. "Everybody in this city is in danger. There are dangerous aliens afoot. Well, not afoot, a-tendril, but... but you don't believe me, do you?"

"_Dangerrrrous aliens, _ye say?" The officer stepped closer to the Doctor, menacingly. "Aye, that there be. An' I'll be arrestin' both o' ye _dangerrrrous aliens_, forthwith. Now if ye'd be so kind as ta come with me quietly, I shan't be needin' ta knock yer brains in, shall I?"

The Doctor turned to run, but the officer moved more quickly than I thought he could, and brought his club down on the back of the Doctor's head. Not satisfied with the results, he bashed the Doctor two more times, until the Doctor lay down, unconscious. Then the police officer turned towards me, smacking his billy club into the palm of his hand. I raised my hands in surrender.

"Smart man," he said. Then he hit me on the head anyways. I saw stars.

---

When I regained my senses, we were sitting on a small bench in a tiny room, with a primitive-looking pair of handcuffs joining our wrists. The Doctor was still unconscious, but he was muttering under his breath. I figured that might have been what roused me.

"It's simple, Brigadier, I'll just reverse the polarity.... hmmmm..."

"Doctor! Wake up!"

"_Neutron Flow_! What?" He suddenly sat upright.

"You okay?"

"Yes, fine. You?" He seemed chipper.

"You seem chipper."

"Well, a good nap does wonders for the mind and body. Now then, where were we?" he attempted to stand up, but then realized that our handcuffs were bolted to the bench. "Oh, yes. Oh!" he started to giggle. "Do you know where we are?"

I looked around. The room was about four feet by four feet, and approximately square. A small amount of light entered the box from a line of windows above our heads.

"We're in a _Police Box_!" he exploded. "Oh, this is priceless! A Police Box!" He slapped his knee in joy.

"Wait... they had Police Boxes in Buffalo? I didn't know that."

The officer banged on the wall from the outside. "Ye'll be shuttin up in thar. Just waitin' fer the wagon to come for ye. An' I'll have ye know that the fire is out, an' the judge'll be wantin' to talk to ye aboot the dead body we found up on the second floor. Bloody animals. What kind o' person kin do tha' to anoth' human bein'?"

"It wasn't a human who killed that man," the Doctor spoke, seriously. "It was an alien from another world. And if you don't let us out of here, everybody on this planet will surely die."

"Aye, tell it to the judge. Not tha' he'd believe ye." I heard the officer walk away from the box.

"Well, there goes Plan A. What's Plan B?" I said.

"There is no Plan B. Let's skip straight to C, shall we?"

"Well then what's Plan C?"

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, and smiled that toothy smile.

-=Chapter Eight=-

With a few subtle whistles the sonic screwdriver set us free from the cuffs. The Doctor peeked out one of the windows, and then used the sonic again to unlock the door of the box. I followed him out the door, as quietly as possible. The Police Box we had been in looked nothing like the TARDIS, by the way. It was an unpainted wooden shack. The police officer who had arrested us was halfway down the block, standing in front of the entrance to the Exposition. He looked like a theme park mascot greeting tourists, and I suppose in a way he was. I had no idea what time it was, but the Exposition grounds were still lit up and filled with people.

It was 1901, our city was the eighth-largest city in America, and we were hosting the grandest fair the world had ever seen. Not only that, but first thing in the morning, the President of the United States of America would be in attendance at the Exposition. And only the Doctor and I knew that he would soon be dead.

---

We made our way south along Elmwood Avenue, moving further away from the western entrance to the Exposition. We walked until we reached the next entrance. I started to cross the street to go back into the Exposition, but the Doctor stopped me.

"No ticket," he reminded me.

"I don't see anybody checking tickets."

"Doesn't matter, anyways," he said. "We're not going back in until tomorrow. For now we need to figure out where the Rutans are likely to go, and be there."

It was rather chilly out that night. I suspected that the Rutans were able to move about quite freely at this temperature. I pulled my great-great-grandfather's coat tighter around me, and wished I had my parka. And my hat was still in the TARDIS! Oh, how I loved that hat. Some people said the earflaps looked ridiculous, but it was warm.

"So, Matt," the Doctor looked at me expectantly. "This is your town. Where do we go?"

---

As we rode the trolley, I tried to recognize landmarks. Some of the buildings looked familiar, but there was so much that had changed in a hundred and nine years. Electric lamp-posts lined the streets, and some of the bigger homes had electric lights in them, as well. The trolley was pulled by a noisy electric motor at the front, that drew its power from overhead lines. It sounded like a Rutan, which made me nervous.

"This is great!" the Doctor said, as he hung out the window of the trolley, waving at people. "I've always enjoyed a nice tram ride!"

"It's a good thing the trolley's free," I replied. "For the Exposition, you know? Otherwise we'd have a very long walk downtown."

"So where are we going? Downtown? What's there?"

"Probably not as much as there will be, in the future. But one thing that I know is there is the Greystone Hotel."

"And? What's at the Greystone?"

"More like _who_. It wasn't well publicized at the time, I mean at _this_ time, but that's where McKinley spent the night before his appearance at the Exposition."

"You mean he's there now? The President?"

"Yep. At least, so long as the history books are right. Some guy was planning on buying it and fixing it up a few years ago. You know, from my perspective it was a few years ago. You know what I mean."

"Yes, yes I do. Time travel plays hell with grammar, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it could. This is my first time, you know."

"Sorry. Do go on."

"Well, it's just that I saw an article in the newspaper about it. How McKinley and Edison had both stayed there during the Exposition. A bunch of other dignitaries, as well."

"Oh! Tom's there, as well? Good show. Good show." The Doctor hung his head back out the window and resumed waving at pedestrians. "Lovely evening, isn't it? Love your city! Reminds me of Cardiff!"

---

The trolley let us off about a block away from the Greystone Hotel, at the end of Johnson Park. Fancy-looking carriages lined the street, with drivers at the ready. I guessed they were that time's equivalent of limousine drivers. As we approached the front entrance of the Hotel, we noticed several men in grey suits watching us closely as they clustered near the door.

"Just keep walking," the Doctor muttered to me, as we approached them. Then, addressing the men by the door, he called out, "Good evening, gentlemen! Isn't it a splendid night?"

"Move along, limey," one of the men answered, gruffly. We kept walking. We reached the end of the building and turned into the alley. The Doctor suddenly stopped, right in front of me.

"Secret Service," he said. I nodded in agreement. "We're not getting in the front way."

"I didn't think we would," I said. "Let's go around back and see what we can see."

At the back of the building, we saw a light. A number of shadowy figures shambled about, silhouetted by the small bonfire. We could hear loud voices, and glass breaking. Suddenly they all broke into song, severely off-key: "_Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight. Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the mooooon_!" This was followed by loud, drunken laughter.

We approached the little group cautiously. As I had expected, they were all dressed in the old-fashioned attire of kitchen staff. Most appeared to be drunk.

"Matt, this might not be the best..." the Doctor started to say, but I sauntered straight into the middle of the party, where a keg stood. I picked up a previously-used tankard from the ground, wiped the rim with the corner of my coat, and filled it with beer. Before anybody at the party could protest, I started to chug it down. It was the best beer I'd had in a long time. I didn't stop drinking until the vessel was empty, and then I belched loudly. I had effectively announced my presence.

I felt an arm around my shoulders. A big guy who smelled like rotten meat and beer leaned on me, smiling in my face. "Hey, ain't you my cousin? You look like my cousin."

"Hey, could be, you never know." I replied, shrugging my shoulders as best I could under his weight. "I've got cousins all over."

"Hey, everybody! This is my cousin!" He held up my hand like I had won a prize fight. In my other hand I held out my tankard, and he quickly moved to refill my beer. I looked around to see where the Doctor had gone, but couldn't see him. However, I noticed the door leading into the kitchen was slowly closing, as though somebody had just gone inside.

---

I settled down on a log, balancing a plate of roast chicken on my knee. I had passed off the beer to somebody else and found a pot of coffee. It seemed like everybody who worked in the hotel was out there, eating their late dinner in the cool night.

My new-found long-lost cousin Horace sat on a log next to mine. He groaned and stretched out his knees, then turned to me. "So what's your name? I know you're not really my cousin, are you?"

"Matthew. Matt for short. You never know; I do have cousins all over."

He looked at me uncomfortably. "So what brings you to Buffalo? I know you're not from around here."

"Umm..." I debated how much to tell him. "The Exposition, of course. And the President."

A group of hotel maids were sitting on another log, to the left of me. Clearly they were listening in on our conversation, because when I mentioned the President, they all started whispering frantically to each other.

"Well it's just that... Well, Matt, there have been some rumors about... that somebody might..." he wiped the sweat from his brow, even though a cold wind was starting to make it uncomfortably chilly out. "That somebody might try to kill him. The President." he blurted out. "Now I'm getting a good look at you by the firelight and I see you're all muddy, and your coat has been out of style for a long time. But your boots look brand new, and your spectacles look like the fancy kind that rich people wear. You're no vagabond, are you?"

"No, sir, I have a home. But it's very far away. And the TARD... And our wagon was stolen."

"So that's why you're down here with the help begging a free meal? You should go to the police and report the theft! Unless you've got something to hide." He was getting to the point. "And I'll bet you do have something to hide, don't you?"

I swallowed a mouthful of chicken, but my throat felt dry. "Like what?"

"Quick answer, no thinking. What's your political party?"

"Libertarian." I answered quickly. Too quickly.

"_Liber-what_?" he stood up. "You'd better explain yourself right quick before I haul you upstairs to the Secret Service myself."

"Libertarian. It's... It's a new party." Now I was the one sweating.

"I don't trust new parties." Horace sneered. "The government has more than enough parties already. That's why I'm an Anarchist."

"_Anarchist_? Great!" I knocked my chicken off my lap. "You're absolutely right about somebody wanting to kill the President." I should not have said that.

---

The maids scurried off. Some of the other hotel staff went back inside the building, while others drew nearer to me and Horace. Suddenly I found myself surrounded.

"You'd better tell us all you know," one of the waiters hissed. "Or I'll cut you open like a fish." A flash of reflected light from his hand let me know that his threat was not idle.

"Uh... really, I don't know that much about it..." I tried backing up but felt strong hands grip me by the shoulders. "Maybe if you tell me what _you_ know, I can fill in some details?"

"I'll bet it's _him_," I heard somebody say. "He looks the type."

"What type? What?"

"There's this guy," Horace began, "who shows up at Anarchist meetings. Dresses like he's poor and talks with a funny accent. Talks about killing off world leaders, and how it would start a war to end all wars. You know this guy?"

"Leon Czolgosz." I spoke the name of the assassin-to-be. I knew that I was endangering the proper flow of history, but I didn't care. I had no intention of being filleted.

One of the men surrounding me turned and walked away. He was short and scrawny, with blond hair. As he was about to turn the corner of the building, he looked back at me with a scowl.

"Yeah, that's the name. We got a newsletter about him last week. What do you know about him?"

"Just the name." The grip on my shoulders tightened. "I swear to you, that's all I know about him. You know as much as I do." I was relieved that I hadn't given away any knowledge from the future that hadn't already become known.

"_Damn it, tell us what you know_!"

"Okay, okay." I figured that a little bit of information couldn't hurt too much. "He's in Buffalo. Somewhere. And yes, he's going to kill the President. Well, try to, anyways. I just don't know exactly when." Well, I fibbed a little. I was pretty sure that I knew when he was going to shoot the President.

"What's he look like?" somebody else asked.

I tried to picture his portrait from the history books I had studied, so many years ago. What had he looked like? Suddenly I remembered.

"Oh my God. He was just here!"

"Who?"

"Leon Czolgosz! The skinny blond-haired guy who was just over there. I think that was him!"

"You mean _Leo_? The _dishwasher_?" I saw jaws drop as the Anarchists realized that what I had told them was true.

---

Soon thereafter, I found myself at a small table in the hotel kitchen. I was wearing a bellhop's uniform, as it was the only clothes I could find that would fit me. A couple of the laundry maids had offered to beat the mud out of my clothes for me. Horace and the other Anarchists had scattered throughout the hotel, to spread the news that Czolgosz had been working there, and to keep the lookout for him. They knew that if he killed the President in the name of Anarchy, they would all face an uncertain fate. I felt sorry for them, because I knew that was precisely what would happen.

"You there, look alive!" an older man in a formal suit yelled at me, as he burst through the kitchen doors. I sat up straight. "I mean get up off your arse. Are you daft?"

"Yes sir, that's me. Daft as a... whatever. What the heck does _daft_ mean?" I stood up.

He looked at me, confused. "You _are_ daft. I've got work for you."

"Right." I contemplated telling him that I didn't work there.

"Well, do you want it or not?"

"Sure, why not? Whatcha got?"

He gave me another look. "Now, look here. This is a first-class hotel! Don't be using any strange dialects while you're working here. Just plain english, that's all I want to hear from you. Understand me?"

"Yes, sir." I gave a mocking salute, which he took to be serious.

He puffed out his chest, and continued, "The guests expect the absolute highest quality of service, even if we are in the savage wastelands of Buffalo, and all we have to wait on them are the dregs of this filthy, wretched place." He looked down his nose at me. "Have you ever been to The City? I'd reckon not, by the looks of you."

"Which city?" I knew which city he meant. I could recognize the haughtiness of his attitude, no matter what century I was in.

"_Which_ city? Why, _New York _City, of course." He stuck his face close to mine. "But you wouldn't know that, would you? You probably think Buffalo is a city. Well, it isn't."

"I was in London yester... last month." I smiled at him, condescendingly. He scowled back at me.

"Oh, really?" he said. "Then you should have plenty in common with the guest in the middle suite, who just arrived from London, himself." He gestured at the swinging doors that lead into the dining room. "There's a tray of pastries and tea here for him. They like their tea, don't they, those English? Take it up fast, and don't forget I get sixty percent of your tips. Although I should get _all_ of it, as I had to prepare it myself."

I hurried through the doors and saw the tray on a little cart. I centered the teapot, and then lifted the whole tray above my head, balanced on my right hand.

"Careful! Don't spill it!" the man warned.

"Don't worry, sir. I once worked as a waiter in a fine restaurant," I reassured him. "It's like riding a bicycle; you never forget how it's done. So where's the middle suite?"

He smiled viciously. "_Fifth floor_."

---

I climbed up six huge flights of stairs, on the grand staircase of the hotel, carrying that tray. My arm was throbbing with pain by the time I reached the top floor. I spotted a small stool, and carefully balanced the tray atop it.

"You, there. Clear out of here!" A voice came from down the hall. I looked, but the directive had not been intended for me. A group of men in dark suits and bowler hats were confronting a disheveled-looking man. I recognized them as being some of the Secret Service agents who had been at the front door earlier that evening. But the man wasn't moving away from them. In fact, he was moving towards them. As I watched, the man reached out to them. An agent grabbed his hand, and I heard the sound of electric current as he screamed and fell to the floor.

The other agents started yelling, and pulling out their guns. Moving quickly, the alien electrocuted them all, before a single shot was fired. I grabbed the teapot from the tray and started moving quickly and quietly down the hall, as the Rutan pawed at the door handle. Apparently they could make themselves appear to have hands, but they still had trouble with doorknobs.

When I had gotten about halfway down the hall, I saw the Rutan stiffen and stand up straight.

Slowly, it turned its head. The head kept turning until it faced me, even though the body was still facing the door. It opened its mouth, and I saw a green glow emanate from within.

I launched the ceramic teapot at the inhuman monster. The teapot fell short, shattering, and some of the hot liquid splashed on the creature's feet. It sprung up to the ceiling in an instant, losing its human shape revealing its blobbish true form. It hung there for a moment, pulsing with green electricity, before it leapt at me. I fell backwards, helpless to defend myself.

-=Chapter Nine=-

Suddenly, a door opened next to me, and a pair of hands grabbed me and pulled me into the room. I saw the Rutan land on the carpet where I had just lain, and then the door slammed shut. The Rutan bashed itself against the door several times. Then it stopped, and the silence seemed louder.

"Matt!" the Doctor exclaimed, seemingly surprised to see me.

"Doctor!" I exclaimed, genuinely surprised. It had been the Doctor who had saved me. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Waiting for my room service. I ordered tea half an hour ago."

"Well, I threw it at the Rutan."

He looked at me, gravely. "You threw my tea at the Rutan."

"I didn't know what else to do!"

"You threw... MY TEA... at the RUTAN?!?!" He looked seriously upset.

"It just killed half a dozen people in the hallway! What was I supposed to do?" I couldn't understand why the Doctor was angry with me.

"Hit it with a stick or something! Isn't that what you apes are good at?" He turned away, took a few steps, and placed his face in his hands. Just as I was about to say something else, he held his hands up, with the index finger of each hand pointed at the ceiling. He crossed his legs, and did a quick one-eighty. His eyes were closed, and his face expressionless. "Did you say the Rutan just killed half a dozen people in the hallway?" he asked, very calmly.

"Yes. And I believe they were _Secret Service Agents_. Probably here protecting _you-know-who_."

"The President who's going to die tomorrow."

"Well, technically, he doesn't die for eight days. Tomorrow he gets shot." I was nit-picking, I know, but frustration made me do that sometimes.

"So what if he dies today or two weeks from Tuesday? The outcome remains the same." He started to pace back and forth in the elegantly furnished room, holding one finger slightly higher than the other. "Roosevelt still becomes President. We just need to make sure that it's the real Roosevelt and not the Rutan Roosevelt." He walked over an antique chair, tipping it gently onto its back with his feet. "Simple solution is to slaughter the slithering slimeballs as soon as... well, soon. OR!" He turned at a ninety-degree angle and knocked over a potted plant. "Convince them to leave peacefully! Which will never happen. Rutans? Leave peacefully? Never happen."

"But he has to die now," I interjected. "This assassination is just the first of many, which eventually causes the First World War. Which causes the Second World War. Which causes the Cold War and a dozen little wars."

"There's no such thing as a _little war_," he said, coldly.

"Exactly. If this doesn't go down exactly the way it says in the history books..."

"Good! Excellent! Wonderful!" He stepped over an ornate coffee table and held his hand up in front of me, like he expected a high-five. I gave him a high-five. "You understand! This one little event, on this tiny little world, shapes the future of the whole Galaxy. Mankind's just starting to become a global community; the Twentieth Century, with all that progress, is just waiting to happen. And here it is, every corner of the planet represented in a crappy little county fair in a backwater city named after a large, edible animal. And two little bullets," he held out his left hand, in which I saw two bullets, "and one tiny little gun, so small it can be concealed in a handkerchief," a Derringer pistol magically appeared in his right hand, "is all we need to make history happen."

"Czolgosz has to kill him. Not you."

"Does it matter?" He looked at me, his eyes watering. "So they'll execute me. I can regenerate again. I've still got a few more in me, I think. Then I'll retire. I'll find a nice planet and meditate for a thousand years and I'll never meddle with the affairs of the Universe again." He seemed on the verge of tears.

I put my hand on his shoulder. "You. Don't. Kill. McKinley. Czolgosz does. That's how history recorded it, anyways. I did a report on this when I was in college."

"You failed that class." he said. He was right.

I looked him in the eye. "I missed the final exam. I would have passed, but I had to pull a double shift." I took the gun out of his hand. He let me take it. I placed the gun on the table and sat in a chair. I motioned to him to sit down; he picked up the chair he had previously walked over, and placed it beside my chair. He sat down.

"But what about the movie? You saw it. I shot McKinley."

I had an idea. "Maybe it was a Rutan disguised as you."

He jumped up. "Maybe it was a Rutan... maybe it was _all_ Rutan!"

"What?"

"We need to look at that movie again. As soon as Nikola Tesla brings the TARDIS back, we need to look at it again." I wasn't too surprised by his assertion that Tesla was the TARDIS thief, as I had surmised the same thing. He started pacing back and forth again.

"So now what? I'm sure sooner or later somebody's going to notice the dead bodies in the hall."

"Actually, I'm surprised that nobody's noticed them already. They didn't die half quiet." The Doctor peered through the peep-hole in the door. "The hotel seems strangely empty."

"Well, we're up on the fifth floor. Well, sort of the sixth, but they count the ground floor separately."

"No excuse," the Doctor said. "There _is_ a lift."

"There's a _what_?"

---

"So whose room is this, anyways?" I asked the Doctor. "Don't tell me you snuck in the back way and managed to book a room on the top floor, with no money and no name?"

"Actually, it's a suite." he said, opening a door. We stepped through the door and there in the bedroom, working at an ornate desk, was Thomas Alva Edison.

"Ah, Doctor!" Edison spoke, looking up from his work. It looked like some sort of electrical diagram. "Is the tea here?" He looked at me in my bellhop uniform. "Did you bring the tea?" he asked me.

"Uh, no, sir, Mister Edison, sir." I stammered. I hadn't been that tongue-tied since I ran into Bill Clinton at a Sabres game. "I mean, yes, I did, but there was a Rutan..."

"Rutan? Doctor? Don't tell me there's aliens afoot again." He looked accusingly at the Doctor.

The Doctor bowed his head in shame, and smiled guiltily. "You know me. Always chasing aliens."

"Yes, and always leaving a path of destruction in your wake. Remember what happened last time? You almost burned down my workshop!"

"_Almost_. Stress on the almost."

"And what about the time you almost pulled my ear off! And that fiasco with the... the... oh, what was his name? The Mister? The _Master_!"

"I'm sorry," I interrupted. "You've met the Doctor before?"

"I don't know what business it is of yours," Edison snorted, "but yes, I have. Doctor, who is this bellhop?"

"Oh, this is my friend, Matt. He's from the future."

"Ah, bellhops from the future! What will they think of next? Well I suppose that means that I've already tipped you, so you can be on your way now. _Shoo_!"

"Now that's not very nice!" the Doctor accused. "You should tip the man. He didn't even know there was a lift."

"Didn't know? Why, I wired up that elevator, myself! Every room in this hotel has electric light! Perhaps you forgot, though. It used to be called the Berkeley Hotel, when it was first built. That was only five years ago." Edison picked up the table lamp from the desk in front of him. "See this? It has a joint on it." He turned the lamp and the bulb, with its stained-glass shade, swiveled out on an arm. "That was the Doctor's entire contribution to the idea. '_It should have an elbow on it_,' he said. 'Why?' I said. "'_Because I like elbows_,' he said. Because I like elbows, indeed!"

I smirked at Edison's impression of the Doctor's voice. "I like elbows." the Doctor said, and I started to laugh.

"Anyways, I don't like this light shade," Edison continued, "the light seems entirely too green."

"What?" the Doctor jumped up and spun around. "_Green_?"

---

I followed the Doctor's gaze, and noticed where the green light was coming from. This suite was one of the few rooms in the hotel to have its own private bathroom, and a green glow was faintly shining through every crack in the closed door. The Doctor cautiously approached the bathroom door.

"Doctor! Here!" Edison had reached into a bag near his feet, and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves. He tossed them to the Doctor, who caught them and pulled them on.

"Perfect! How'd you know?"

"Are these aliens slimy?"

"No, not particularly. More like sticky."

"Oh, well, then perhaps different gloves..." Edison started to root through the bag.

"But they _are_ electric." the Doctor added.

"Ah, perfect then."

---

"Mister Edison?" I asked.

"Tom." He smiled at me, trying to look friendly.

"Tom, do you have any more rubber gloves?"

Edison looked in his bag for a few seconds. "No."

"Anything non-conductive?"

Edison looked in his bag for a few seconds. "No."

"Then perhaps we should leave."

"Good idea." He gathered up his notes from the desk. Before I could see what they all were, he shuffled them into a neat pile, but I could see that the papers on top were blueprints to some kind of machine. He stuffed them into the bag and rose from his chair. Then he handed me his bag.

"I'm not really a bellhop, you know."

He snatched his bag back from me. "And you think you're getting a tip?" He left the bedroom in a huff.

"Could you two be quiet? I'm huntin' wabbits over here!" the Doctor whispered, loudly. He was standing at the bathroom door, his rubber-gloved hand hovering over the knob.

"Maybe you should knock first." He looked at me like I was crazy. "Well, it's a bathroom," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "Rutan's don't... do that. Not like that, anyways."

"Might be in the bath."

"Yeah, could be..." the Doctor mused. "Well, nothing I've never seen before! And besides, I'm a Doctor!" He grabbed the doorknob and flung it open.

---

The Rutan was in the bath.

---

I picked up the desk lamp and threw it at the alien thing. My first and most basic human instinct was to destroy it. The cord stopped its flight in mid-arc, and it plummeted to the tile floor. The glass shade and bulb both shattered.

The Rutan, which was halfway out of the bathtub when I threw the lamp, retreated into the tub. It was filled halfway with water, which seemed to boil and churn around the beast. Every surface of the room was covered with thick frost, and mist that rose from the turbulent bath was falling from the ceiling as big, puffy snowflakes.

"What'd you do that for?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, uh... it was hot. The bulb."

"Well now it's not. Now it's just broken glass that the Rutan might cut itself on. Oh dear, it might get a tiny boo-boo on its littlest tentacle. Stupid ape."

"Hey, at least it got back in the bath."

"For the moment. Remember, they can jump."

"AND WE can walk." The Rutan took on the shape of a man; the same man I had seen in the hallway. As he changed shape, his voice changed, as well. "And we can talk." He stepped out of the bath, and, strangely, his clothes were not wet. The footprints it left in the snow caught my attention, because they looked strangely crooked. They were definitely not human footprints.

"Then let's talk, you and me. Time Lord to Rutan. Just between us higher species." the Doctor said. He motioned me towards the door.

"Very well, then. Human, you may leave. We are a single Rutan; the brood of our energies are elsewhere. We will speak to the Time Lord."

---

I left the bedroom as quickly as I could. Edison stood at the door to the hallway, looking out.

"Well, at least the President's safe," he said.

"Not very," I said. "All of the Secret Service agents are dead."

"No, they're not. They're right here."

I ran to the door. Four men in identical suits stood at the end of the hallway, by the door to the President's suite. Four more men stood by the top of the stairs, at the other end of the hallway. We were, as the name "middle suite" would imply, in the middle. There was no sign of the other agents' bodies, nor did I see any trace of the broken teapot.

"Damn it." I muttered.

"Blasphemer!" Edison said.

"They took the pastries."

"Damn it!" he groaned. "There's nothing quite like a good pastry."

I pulled Edison back into the room, and closed the door.

"What's the meaning of this? They'll let us pass! Do you know who I am?" He grabbed the lapels of his coat and scowled at me fiercely. "We _will _get our pastries back."

"Those were Rutans."

"Rutans? I thought they were electric. And green."

"And shapechangers. But apparently somewhat limited in that regard."

"How do you mean?"

"Those men? They all had the same face." I locked the door.

---

I went back to the bedroom. The Doctor was holding the Rutan at bay with his sonic screwdriver. "Hey, Doc, he lied. The other eight are in the hall."

"I know. Check this out; new setting I just installed on this thing. Micro-millimeter wave. Creates a small beam of invisible light that cooks your skin ever so slightly. Does no damage but it hurts like _hell_." He pointed it at my arm, above the elbow, and it felt like I was being branded. I jerked away.

He pointed the sonic at the Rutan again. "Now answer my questions! How many are you?"

The Rutan had reverted to its blobby shape, although it was perched on an elegant chair. "WE ARE NOT TELLING."

"Doctor! Are you torturing it?"

"No, not really. You were the demonstration. Now it knows that I'm not fibbing. I'm not fibbing, am I, Matt? That felt really, really, hot, didn't it?"

"Like a cigarette being put out on my skin. But it didn't even leave a mark. Don't do that again."

"Oh, yes, I completely forgot..." the Doctor rummaged about in his left jacket pocket with his left hand. "No... hang on..." He reached completely around himself and rummaged about in his right pocket with his left hand. Then he reached in an inside pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "These are yours," he said.

I took the pack of cigarettes. "Oh, wow! I haven't had a cigarette all day! Thank you! Where'd you get these?"

"Your house. Couple of weeks ago. Nobody was home. I drank some milk, hope you don't mind. And I helped myself to some cheese. Is that all you ever have, cheddar? You should get some more variety in your cheese."

"Sometimes I have swiss."

"Ooh! I like swiss! Lots of little round holes. I like little round holes. You know. In my cheese." He looked slightly embarassed.

"Yeah I noticed a certain pattern to the TARDIS decor. All of the walls had those porthole things..."

"Some are windows, some are lights. Some are cupboards. Some are access panels to vital systems of the TARDIS. They all have a purpose. I don't just put little round holes in every TARDIS desktop theme just because I like little round holes in my cheese." He sounded defensive.

"I wonder if they have any cheese at the Exposition."

"Yes, they do!" he said. "Over near the... oh that information booth with the woman who had the funny hat. You remember the one? It was all fruit? I wanted to eat her head!"

"Oh, yeah! Hey that isn't far from..." I beamed a mischievous smile.

"From what?"

"The Original Hamburg Sandwich!"

"Oh, no." He wagged his finger at me. "No cheeseburgers!"

"Okay, but I have to try one of those burgers. I mean, it's the _original_. The real deal, you know? None of that fast food crap."

"Okay, okay, I'll let you have a hamburger. _One_ hamburger. No cheese!"

"Thanks, Doc." I opened my pack of cigarettes and lit one. The familiar smoke felt good in my nicotine-starved lungs.

"I still think you should quit," the Doctor said, disapprovingly.

I looked around. "So, uh... where's the Rutan?" It was no longer on the chair.

---

We jumped up from our chairs and searched the room. There was a window open in the bathroom, which was probably how it got in the bathroom in the first place. The localized snow flurries had stopped, and the frost was starting to melt.

"Hey, Doc, look at this!" I was looking at the footprints on the snowy tile.

"Don't call me Doc. Please."

"Doc_tor_. The Rutan's got his shoes on the wrong feet."

He bounded over, and looked at the rapidly melting footprints. "More like he's got his feet on the wrong feet! Rutans were never very good at xenobiology. I remember the first battle they had with the Sontarans. They kept shooting the Sontarans in the... um... lower abdominal area. Between the legs." He coughed and looked at the wall like it had done something interesting. "The Sontarans don't have any vital organs there. No organs at all, actually. I never understood Rutan biology until I examined that Rutan I killed at Fang Rock. Their brain is not inside the globular mass, you know. It's suspended in a sac that hangs on the underside of the creature. Almost looks like, well, you know, a sac filled with brains. But they're little brains, most of the time. Two of them; one for the individual and one for the hive-mind."

"So it's a sac with a pair of brains in it. Sounds... really familiar. And I'm glad it wasn't humans fighting the Rutans in that battle."

"Or Time Lords!" He started to laugh, then cleared his throat and adjusted his shorts. Then he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands; he put them on his hips, with the thumbs crooked into the tops of his pants pockets. "Well, anyways... that Rutan that was just here? The one that got away? He had a _huge_ sac."

I couldn't help it; I burst out laughing.

-=Chapter Ten=-

Hotels at the beginning of the last century were great. Absolutely _great_. Not like the 21st century at all. The last time I stayed at a fancy hotel, there was a little cash bar inside the tiny fridge. Little plastic bottles of booze, with full-sized price tags on them. If you took one, it would be added to your bill. But in 1901, Thomas Edison's fifth floor suite at the Greystone Hotel had a fully stocked bar, with heavy glass decanters of the finest liquors.

The Doctor grabbed two bottles of wine from the well-stocked wine rack and studied the labels. "1890... 1890... I think I stepped on these grapes! I wonder if this wine tastes like my feet..."

"Doctor, this is not the time for a wine tasting!" Edison chided him. "The hallway is filled with aliens, we have no way of knowing if the President is even here, that rat Tesla's been running around, and there's another of those Rutans that may or may not still be in the room!"

"Wait, what?" I asked Edison. "The President might not be here?"

"He books rooms at a half dozen hotels. The Secret Service stays in most of them. Don't know why he bothers dragging them around with him; Grover Cleveland never did. In _either_ of his terms."

"But the Rutans are here. Why would they be here if he wasn't here?"

"Well, my boy, ask yourself this: who came first, the chicken or the egg?"

I shook my head. "The egg, of course. What are you talking about?"

He clucked his tongue at me. "Doctor, you've got a good one, here. _Ever_ so much smarter than those pretty girls you always hang around."

The Doctor responded by pouring wine on the persian rug. He looked at Edison apologetically. "Sorry. Not flammable enough. Tasty, though. Not at all like feet. Well, not _my_ feet, anyways."

Edison and I stared at him, flabbergasted. "What are you _doing_?" I said, in that tone I sometimes used with my daughter when she did things like that.

"Making cocktails. Want some?" The Doctor grabbed a funnel and started pouring liquor into one of the wine bottles from two decanters at the same time. He seemed to have an idea as to how much of each liquor he wanted to put in the bottle, like making molotov cocktails was something in which he specialized. I grabbed the other bottle and started sniffing decanters.

"Use that one." he said, using his chin to point at a brownish liquor. I carefully filled the wine bottle about a third of the way with the strong-smelling beverage. Edison produced a small pile of cloth napkins from a cabinet beside the bar, onto which I up-ended the decanter. Then I stuffed a booze-soaked napkin in the mouth of the bottle, while the Doctor did the same to his.

---

"So, Mister Edison, where's this elevator I've been hearing about?"

"Right across the hall. But we have to ring for it, and then the operator will bring it up."

"How do we ring for it?"

"Why, the button on the wall, of course."

I looked out the peep-hole on the door. I could see a large pair of double doors. "That's an elevator?"

"Of course that's an elevator. You wouldn't want to just leave the shaft sitting wide open, would you? Somebody might fall in."

"Well, I'm used to... future doors." I figured that I'd better not explain too much about elevators in my century.

"Oh, I see." He grasped his lapels and scowled at me. "So our old-fashioned wooden doors aren't good enough for you? Hinges too complicated for you? Can you even _work_ a doorknob, or are you so conditioned to opening a door with your brainwaves that you can't fathom what fingers are for?"

"Now, now, Tom. They don't get that bad for another few centuries." The Doctor was scanning the room with his sonic screwdriver. "Nope! No Rutans hiding in this room. And I've sealed the door and all of the windows good and tight." He stuck the sonic back in his pocket with a bit of a flourish, like a gunfighter twirling his pistol on his finger before holstering it.

I looked back out the peep-hole, trying to see the button that would ring for the elevator operator. I spotted it to the right of the big double doors.

"Okay, here's my plan. We somehow ring the ding-a-ling thing, and then when the elevator gets here, we throw the molotovs down the hall and jump in the elevator."

"Bad plan," the Doctor said. "The elevator's electric. They can disrupt any electrical system, possibly even control it. We're going down the stairs."

"Won't the Rutans just follow us down the stairs?"

"No, it's more likely they'll climb down the side of the building. Which means that they'll get to the bottom faster." The Doctor grabbed a pair of very delicate-looking lacy throw-pillows from a small couch and smacked them together repeatedly. "How often do they dust in here? Every day?"

---

"Well, Doctor, what's _your _plan?" Edison asked him. "Not that you ever have one."

"We need to make dust!" The Doctor bounded across the room and started shaking a small blanket that he had spotted where it lay across the back of an armchair.

"Dust?" I asked.

"Dust! Don't question, just do it!"

I grabbed some books off the shelves and shook them by their spines. Some of the pages fell out, and a decent amount of dust, as well. Then I had another idea. I lit another cigarette.

The Doctor noticed. "Good! Good! Smoke works, too!"

"Well, in that case," said Edison, as he pulled out a cigar, "I don't suppose you'd mind if I indulge, as well."

"If you must," the Doctor sneered, disapprovingly. He climbed atop the little couch now, holding one of the persian rugs that were scattered throughout the room. Not the one he poured wine on, though. He started whacking the rug with one hand while holding it aloft with the other. He breathed in a face full of dust as it flew out of the rug, sneezed, and fell onto the couch with the rug on top of him. He jumped to his feet and banged the dust out of his coat. "Well, that's enough of _that_," he said. "Now we just need to get the Rutans in here."

"In _here_?" I sputtered, choking on Edison's cigar smoke. I barely needed to smoke my own cigarette to get all the nicotine I craved. "I thought you sealed the door. You know, so we'd be safe."

"We were never safe in here," he said. "This isn't a haven. This is a slaughterhouse."

---

The room had high ceilings; at least twelve feet. In the center of the room was an electric ceiling fan, with the _Edison_ logo emblazoned upon it. The Doctor grabbed a small table and set it directly below the fan, and then placed a small glass of water on it. He stood by the windows, across from the door, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He aimed it at the glass of water, and Edison and I watched in amazement as it rapidly boiled and evaporated. Then he adjusted the screwdriver, and aimed it at the ceiling fan, which started spinning at an alarming rate. As we watched, the smoke and dust particles in the air started to swirl around. He adjusted the screwdriver further, and the fan sped up, causing a tiny tornado to form on the top of the small table. The glass frosted over and cracked, then flew across the room to shatter against a wall, near where Edison was standing.

Edison ducked and scowled at the Doctor, as he tried to keep his bag shut with one hand while holding an unlit molotov cocktail in the other. I dashed across the room to him, and pulled out my cigarette lighter.

The Doctor then pointed his screwdriver at the door, which flew open. The eight Rutans were all standing in the doorway. I noticed that it was getting much windier and colder in the room, and as the Doctor adjusted his screwdriver one more time, it started to snow.

The miniature tornado in the center of the room absorbed the snow, and grew larger. I felt my hair rise as it filled with static. The Rutans moved into the room, enchanted by the snowy twister. They surrounded it, paying no attention to us, and reached out towards it.

"_Now_!" the Doctor yelled. I tried to light the alcohol-soaked towels that plugged the bottles, but it was too windy. I turned my back to the wind, and flicked the wheel across the flint repeatedly, hoping for a flame. Suddenly, it lit, and the wick caught. Edison lit his wick off mine, and we turned to face the Rutans, who had turned to face us.

I threw my molotov cocktail at the floor in front of them, and fell back into the wall as it exploded into flame. Edison threw his bottle awkwardly, and it landed behind the Rutans, on the other side of the snow tornado.

"I think you should know," the Doctor shouted, over the sound of screaming Rutans, "that wasn't _water_ in the glass!"

The snowy tornado burst into blue flame. I covered my head with my hands as the room suddenly filled with fire. I felt a hand grab my elbow and pull me. I chanced a peek and saw that it was the Doctor. I followed him out of the room and into the hallway, where Thomas Edison was already sitting, looking slightly singed. My bellhop's jacket was smoldering, and he and the Doctor smacked at the burning bits with their hands.

"Did we get them?" I asked.

The Doctor stood at the door to the room, his eyes filled with reflections of the flames. He had no expression as he turned his face to me. "They're dead," he said, flatly. He started to shamble down the hall, towards the suite that we had assumed contained the President and his wife. Barely pausing, he kicked the door off its frame and marched into the dark room.

---

"Empty," he said, as he re-emerged. "McKinley's not here. And it's a good thing, too. The Rutans were only here because they followed _us_."

"What about the other one, Doctor?" Edison asked, as he picked himself off the floor. "There were eight in the hall, and one in the bath. Where's he gone, then?"

"She."

"What?"

"It was a she. A queen. Little 'q' on the queen, mind you. The capital 'Q' Queen lives on Rutan III. Never moves. This is one of her minions."

"Well, what about her?" I said. "She's got to be around here, somewhere."

"She's looking for McKinley. She already searched this hotel and didn't find him, and she left her brood to keep us pinned down."

---

Several of the hotel workers appeared on the stairs, including some whom I had met earlier at their backyard dinner. The big doors on the elevator swung open, striking me on the shoulder. Horace pulled back a cage and ran out. He was carrying a fire extinguisher, which he started spraying into the burning room. "You there! Help us out!" he yelled, as more of the employees lined up behind him with buckets full of water.

I ran into the empty Presidential Suite. It had a different layout than Edison's suite, and was more elegantly furnished. The private bathroom was closer to the hallway door, and I turned on the tap in the basin. The plumbing groaned and brownish water started to sputter from the pipe, then formed a steady stream. "We have water in here!" I yelled. A bucket brigade formed between the sink and the fire, and I went back to the hallway. The Doctor was standing by the top of the steps, waving to me.

"Let's go!" he said, waving his wobbly fingers frantically. "Quickly!" He started to run down the stairs. I ran after him.

"Where's Edison?" I yelled, hoping he could hear me. The stairwell had filled with all of the guests of the hotel, who were trying to evacuate. Most were in nightgowns and pajamas, but I caught a glimpse of a naked couple in one of the hallways, holding bed sheets around them and looking dazed. I doubled back and told them, "It's cold outside. Better put something on."

The man tried to open the door to their room, but it was locked. I went back to the stairs as the woman started to cry, but then thought better of it and turned back. I took off my bellhop's jacket and handed it to the woman, then turned to face the door. The man stepped back as I rammed my right shoulder into it. It was very solid, and barely budged. I rubbed my shoulder and reconsidered my attack. I lifted my right leg and kicked the door near the handle, putting as much of my weight behind the kick as possible. The wooden door frame proved to be no match for my 21st Century steel-toed work boots, and the door swung open.

"Thank you, sir! Thank you very much!" the man said, shaking my hand vigorously. I recognized him now as Roswell, the man who had called me a vagabond, right before the Doctor and I had been arrested. My shoulder hurt from the pumping he was giving my arm, but worse than that, he dropped his bedsheets. The woman had already scurried into the room, and the man quickly followed. I went back to the stairwell and saw Horace coming down the stairs.

"The fire's out," he said, looking exhausted. "What happened in there? What were those green things?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Where's the Doctor?"

"Who?"

"The Doctor. British guy, about this tall, with funny hair."

"I don't know. I saw Thomas Edison, though. He's still up there. He insisted that he would pay for all damages and that he should supervise the cleanup. Closed the door as soon as the fire was out."

"Good," I said. "Somehow I got the impression that he's used to cleaning up the Doctor's messes."

---

I finally reached the ground floor, after weaving my way through the people heading up and down the stairs. Some were heading back to their rooms, and some had apparently decided that a fire in the hotel was a good reason for a party. As I passed the first floor, I saw that many of them had gathered in the hotel dining room, and had pressed a maid into service as a bartender.

I found the laundry, where my own clothes had been cleaned and neatly folded. I changed in the cold, dark room, and found my coat on the hook where I had hung it. A piece of paper crinkled in the pocket, and I pulled it out. It was a note that read, "Room 112, knock three times. Maureen and Hattie." It was signed with two lipstick kisses. I remembered that they were the two young maids who had offered to launder my clothes for me, and I smiled as I momentarily considered the proposal. Then I looked at the silver ring on my left hand, folded the note, and put it in my pocket.

I went through the laundry to the kitchen, where another set of stairs led to the hallway near the dining room. Room 112 was immediately to my right, and I knocked three times. I heard a rustling and a muttering, then the door slowly opened. A young woman squinted out from the dark room, her long red hair hanging in her eyes. She brushed it back and looked at me.

"Oh! It's you! We fell asleep waiting for you. But the offer's still good..." she smiled sleepily and opened the door further.

"Sorry, I'm not here for fun." I held up my left hand and wiggled my wedding ring with my thumb. "There's been a fire in the hotel. Don't worry, it's out, but I thought you should know. And there are guests in the dining room who need service."

"Oooh!" she whined. "Always somebody needing service, and never the kind that's fun." She pouted. "Hattie! Wake up!" She closed the door.

---

I turned from their door and found myself suddenly confronted by the man in the nice suit. His tie was untied and his hair, what little there was of it, was sticking out at weird angles. "What the hell's going on here? Who are you, anyways? I don't remember hiring you."

"Sorry, sir, there's been a bit of an accident on the fifth floor."

"A bit of an accident? A _bit_ of an accident? An entire room has been gutted. _Utterly_ gutted. The same room that I sent _you_ to, two hours ago, with a pot of tea!" His face turned red. "What are you trying to do, destroy my hotel?"

"Now Mister Statler, calm down, I'm sure it's nothing like that," said Maureen, as she emerged from the room in her maid's uniform. I saw the other maid, Hattie, standing behind her. "The fire's out, and there's guests to be attended to." She started to tie his tie, and he calmed down noticeably. "Now fix your hair and let's go." She led him towards the dining room, where the noise of the impromptu party was building.

I headed the other way, down through the kitchen and out the back door. The Doctor was standing outside, waving his screwdriver back and forth.

"Oh, there you are! I thought maybe you'd joined the party. Wouldn't blame you if you did. No Rutans around here any more." He put the sonic back in his pocket and sat on one of the logs that circled the smoldering embers of the bonfire. I sat next to him and lit a cigarette. He snatched it from me and took a drag, then went into a coughing fit. "How can you smoke those?" he gasped.

"Oh, I don't know," I said, taking the cigarette back from him and putting it to my lips. "They're not so bad. At least I don't smoke cigars."

"I used to smoke a pipe, long time ago," he said. "Thought it made me look older. I should have figured that the white hair and walking stick were enough." He stood up, brushing off the seat of his pants. "I'm going to join the party." He walked back into the hotel.

I finished my cigarette, being careful to put the filter in my pocket after it had been fully snuffed. I didn't know if filtered cigarettes existed in 1901, but I was sure that we didn't want to do any more damage to history than we had already done. Then I got up, combed my hair with my fingers, and went inside.

---

I awoke, fully clothed, sprawled across a small bed. Beside me, in another small bed, lay Maureen and Hattie. They didn't look very comfortable squeezed into that little bed. They were asleep and, like me, fully clothed in their maid's uniforms. In a small chair in one corner of the room sat the Doctor; his eyes closed and his arms folded. He appeared to be asleep. I shuffled off the end of the bed as quietly as I could. It was a small room, with a tiny window, and only one door. A small, simple table in the corner held a basin and ewer. Sunlight streamed through the window, and I wondered how late we had slept.

"Good morning," the Doctor said, suddenly awake. "Shall we go?"

"Yes, go, yes. Going would be good. Where's the toilet?"

He smiled. "Down the hall, past the dining room. I'll show you." We exited Room 112, leaving the slumbering maids behind.

After I was done doing what I needed to do, I met the Doctor again in the hallway. We strolled to the front door of the hotel, passing an exhausted Mister Statler at the front desk. He gave us an angry glare, then turned back to the customers who were giving him grief. It was, once again, Roswell and his lady friend, except that this time they were fully clothed. She saw us pass, and gave me a smile and a tiny wave. I blushed, remembering how she had looked in nothing but bedsheets, and hurried after the Doctor into the morning sun.

-=Chapter Eleven=-

We joined the line for the trolley, but there were a lot of people downtown who wanted to go to the Exposition that day. After all, today was the big day, when the President was going to give a speech. Although Buffalo had already been the hometown of two past Presidents, it wasn't every day that a sitting head of state graced this little city by the lake. I looked up at the towering elm trees that made a canopy over the street.

"Someday these will all be gone," I said, to the Doctor.

"Eh? What will?" He seemed distracted by something.

"These elm trees. Dutch elm disease will wipe most of them out. Worse than the October storm of '06."

"Shhh!" He put his finger to his lips and hunched close to me. "Don't say another word."

"Why?" I whispered.

"I'm thinking."

I looked at him. He looked like he was having some sort of conversation with himself, that only he could hear.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, finally.

The Doctor spun around, and faced one of the other people waiting for the trolley. "Excuse me sir, I have a question."

The man looked at him unsavorily. "What?" he bleated.

"Um... Never mind. You, sir! I have a question!"

The second man to whom the Doctor had turned his attention looked up from his shoes dreamily. "Mmm, hmm?" he muttered.

"Have you noticed any odd changes to the weather recently? I'm a meteorologist, and I..."

"Meteorologist?" somebody else asked. "Like in meteors?"

"Well, no, actually it's the study of weather..."

"...'Cause we _had_ a meteor not too long ago...."

"Did it affect the weather?" The Doctor was acting like he was onto something.

"Hard to tell, in Buffalo. Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes!" A round of laughter arose from the surrounding people. As if on cue, a cloud obscured the sun, and it suddenly became chilly.

I looked at the person who had mentioned the meteor. He was dressed like a farmer. "So where'd the meteor come down?" I asked him.

He looked around. "Don't you read the papers? In Lake Erie, of course! Right near where the Black Rock used to be."

"Black Rock?" the Doctor asked.

"At the mouth of the Niagara," I said to him. "There used to be a big, black rock. They blew it up when they dug the canal."

"Aye, that's where it was," the farmer concurred. "And then right after it came down, we got that storm. Rained for a whole week, it did. Bad for the pumpkins." He spit some tobacco juice on the dirt sidewalk. "Finally stopped about a week ago. Had to put the pumpkins up on pallets to keep them above water, we did."

"Well, now, that's what I was asking about! Freak weather conditions like that!" The Doctor seemed flustered.

"Ain't no freak weather in Buffalo," the farmer said. "Just weather. All kinds."

---

The Doctor pulled me away from the rest of the people waiting for the trolley. "They've been here two weeks," he said.

"I gathered that," I said. "The meteor was their space ship?"

"I would assume that. The body we found in that house was a fresh kill, so I assume they have another base of operations. Do you know what else I would assume?"

"What?"

"That electric automobile over there belongs to Tom." He moved his eyeballs rapidly to indicate that he was referring to something behind him. I looked that way, and saw the car, parked near the front door of the Greystone Hotel.

"That car's electric?"

"Most cars these days were electric. You humans should have stuck with that."

"So what are we going to do? Borrow Edison's car?"

"No, of course not. You're going to the Exposition. _I'm_ borrowing the car. Now give me your phone."

I pulled my phone from my pocket. "Battery's dead, again," I said. "I think the Rutans ate it." He waved his sonic screwdriver at it, and handed it back.

"It's fully charged now. Call me when the TARDIS reappears."

"Oh, yeah! That reminds me... did Edison know that Tesla stole the TARDIS?"

"No, how could he?" the Doctor looked at me, confused. I could hear the trolley approaching.

"Well, they work together. Isn't Tesla his assistant or something?"

"No, not for years. Bitter enemies, now."

"I saw them together yesterday," I said. Now I was the one who was confused.

The Doctor stood close to me, as though confiding a secret. "He was only here to steal the TARDIS. And I let him do it." Then he suddenly ran off, in the direction of Edison's electric automobile. I turned towards the approaching trolley and joined the line. As I was stepping onto the little electric train, the Doctor zipped past in the car. He was going maybe twenty miles per hour, and loving it; his face was all goggles and smile.

---

It was an uneventful ride to the Exposition grounds. In the daylight, I was able to recognize more of the buildings that still stood in my day. The city was filled with the noise of car horns, horse carts, and street vendors. Every time the trolley paused for an intersection, young boys ran up to it, trying to sell newspapers to the passengers. I had to keep shooing them away, as I still had no money. I wondered how I was going to get into the Exposition.

When the trolley stopped in front of the Observatory, most of the festival-goers disembarked and headed straight for the entrance gates. I saw a pair of Secret Service agents standing beside the gates, surveying the crowd. A woman stood just within, taking tickets. I looked around for another way in. Just then, my cellphone rang; it was a good thing that I had set it to silent mode. I stepped away from the line that had formed by the entrance, and flipped it open discretely.

"Hello, hello?" I answered in my usual way. I always said "hello" twice.

"Matt Matt, it's the Doctor Doctor."

"What what?"

"Is there an echo on this line?"

"No. What line? How are you able to call me, anyways? Our phones shouldn't work without a cellular network!" A couple of people waiting in the line looked towards me as I spoke, so I wandered further away from the crowd.

"The TARDIS is our network. So long as it stays within this dimension, and doesn't become time-displaced, or blocked by a trans-psychogenic force field..."

"A what?"

"A trans-psychogenic anti-electromagnetic force field. You know, like... Do you read comics?"

"Comics?"

"Like Batman and Spider-man?"

"When I was a kid..."

"Susan Storm."

"Who?"

"Susan Storm!"

I racked my brain for a few seconds. "Oh! Sue Richards! The Fantastic Four!"

"Richards? No, you're thinking of Reed Richards. _Mister _Fantastic."

"They got married."

"Really? When?"

"When I was a kid."

"Hmmph." He sounded disappointed. "Well, anyways, she had those force fields that she created with her mind, remember?"

"Yeah, _invisible_ force fields."

"They're _all _invisible. If they were visible they would just be walls."

I sighed in frustration. "So, Doc?" I had wandered pretty far away from the South-West entrance to the Exposition, and was walking down Elmwood Avenue. Ahead of me I could see another entrance, but only a few people were standing outside. I also saw the Police Box in which the Doctor and I had been temporarily incarcerated the night before. I looked around for the Irish policeman, but didn't see him. "Why'd you call?"

"Oh! Um... I'm lost. Sorry."

I sighed again. "I should have come with you. I'm a delivery man, remember? _Some_ of the streets are the same."

"Okay, then, Delivery Man. I crossed over a bridge and now I'm surrounded by some unusual buildings. I think they're silos? I smell grain."

"You're going the wrong way. Turn around and head North along the lakefront, through the city. Keep the water on your left and sooner or later it will become a river instead of a lake. But at the speed that car goes, it'll take you _hours_."

"I tweaked it a bit. Much faster now!"

"How fast?" I worried about his safety. I doubted that the car had seat-belts or good brakes.

"Oh, about tenfold. Maybe twentyfold. Hard to tell."

"_Twentyfold?_ So you're going about..." I heard a loud screeching noise. Something that resembled a missile shot down the center of Elmwood Avenue along the trolley tracks, leaving a cloud of dirt and flaming debris in its wake. "You're going the wrong way! _Again!_"

"What? _Blast_! Who designed the streets in this ridiculous city?"

"Frederick Law Olmstead. Make a left on Hertel Avenue, if it isn't too late."

"That was a rhetorical question, by the way." I could barely make out his voice, through the other noises that were coming through the phone. "Okay, I made the left. You know, the brakes on this thing are_ terrible_. But it corners well. Just a bit of understeer, though. Bounced off a building or two. I think... I think I killed a chicken!" He sounded distraught.

"Okay, Hertel Avenue should take you straight to the river. When you hit Niagara Street, make another left and..." I was interrupted by another burst of noise from the phone.

"Too late. Good news, though!"

"What do you mean, _too late_?"

"I'm in the river. But the chicken _lived_!" I heard a clucking noise, as he apparently held his phone up to the chicken. "If you see Tom, tell him that the floating seat cushions work _great_. One of my more brilliant ideas. There's a bit of a current here though, isn't there? I'm moving right along!"

"Yeah, of course there's a current. It's the Niagara. I suggest you..."

"The Niagara? _The_ Niagara?"

"The Niagara that falls. As in _Niagara Falls_. I suggest you get to shore."

"Tell you what, let me call you back. Let this be a lesson to you about driving while talking on your mobile." I heard some splashing noises, and he hung up. I shook my head in disbelief.

---

I closed my phone, and slipped it back into the inside pocket of my great-great-grandfather's jacket. It clinked against the old coin that was still there, but then I heard another, slight clink. I pulled the phone back out and dug into that pocket. I pulled out four coins: the Gulden, which I put in my pants pocket, and three shiny dimes. The front sides of the dimes showed a portrait of a handsome woman, with a laurel in her hair and a tiny diadem which read "LIBERTY." She was surrounded by the words "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1900." The reverse side simply read "ONE DIME," the words encircled by sheaves of corn and wheat. I wondered how the dimes had gotten into my pocket.

I juggled the dimes in the palm of my hand. How much was the admission to the Exposition? I could spend these dimes to get in, maybe even to get some lunch. But if I could save these coins, and take them back to the future with me... I could probably sell them to a collector for a lot of money. I looked at the dimes again. They seemed extra shiny. Maybe too shiny... I sniffed one, and it smelled of chicken fat. Of course, Horace must have put the dimes in my pocket! I wished I had gotten a chance to say good-bye to my new friend, but I didn't see him at the hotel that morning.

I glanced at my phone again. The little display on the casing showed the time and date as 10:03 AM, September 5th, 1901. Something in the back of my mind started to bug me. Niagara Falls... September 5th... September 6th! I opened the phone and hit the green button twice. The first time, it remembered the previous call, and the second time was to tell the phone to dial that number. I heard the distinctive double-ring of a European phone, and then the Doctor answered.

"Hello? Who's this?" His voice sounded a bit different. Deeper, for one thing.

"Doctor? It's Matt."

"Who? Matt? Leela, talk to this fellow, would you? I'm a bit busy at the moment." It definitely wasn't the same voice. I heard the phone being passed from hand to hand.

"What is this thing? Is it a god?" I heard a woman's voice ask. She sounded British, but I didn't recognize the dialect.

"No, of course not, it's a telephone... oh, just _talk_ to it." The man sounded short-tempered.

"Hello? Telephone?" She asked.

"Hello," I replied. "Who's this?"

"I am Leela of the Sevateem. Who are you? How did you get into this tiny box? Is it a TARDIS, like the Doctor's? He has said that TARDISes come in different shapes and sizes, but his is always the blue box. He says it is broken, but he likes the blue box. It does not look broken to me, though. Are you a Time Lord?" Although she spoke strangely, her words were clear as she spoke quickly. I wondered if English was her native language or if it was the TARDIS translating her words.

"Leela of the Sevateem? I've never heard of the Sevateem. Where are you from?"

"Doctor, where am I from?"

"Never-never land," I heard him reply. There was a considerable amount of clattering going on on their end of the connection, and I could hear the TARDIS engines running. "You're one of the Lost Boys. Well, Lost _Girls_, anyways." I could almost hear him smile.

My phone beeped. I had another incoming call.

"Hang on, I've got a call." I pressed a button on my phone. "Hello?"

"Hello?" It was the Doctor.

"Hell-_O_!" the other Doctor replied. I must have accidentally turned it into a three-way call.

"Now there are two of them in the box, Doctor!" Leela exclaimed.

"Leela!" the Doctor shouted, hurting my ear. "Oh, my dear Leela! How are you? Still wearing the old leather knickers?"

"If you _must_ know," the other Doctor replied, "She's dressed like a sailor, right now. I finally got her to wear a proper dress, and she chucked it for a wool sweater and baggy pants. But don't worry; she'll be dressed properly by the time we reach our destination, won't she?" I heard her laugh, defiantly.

"'Atta boy, Doctor! Keep trying!" the Doctor encouraged him. "Not going to do much good, though. She'll go back to the leathers, eventually. Sorry! Spoilers!"

"This is why we don't talk to ourselves much," the other Doctor said. "You know you're breaking at least three laws of time by placing this call? You'll have the Time Lords down on our heads. Well, our _head_."

---

"I hate to interrupt," I interjected, "but I need to talk to the Doctor."

"Yes?" they both said, simultaneously.

"Not _you_, Doctor. _You_, Doctor."

"Leela, press the mauve button. Good-bye, Doctor! Be you later!" I heard a click as they hung up.

"That was weird," I said. "Leather knickers?"

"Oh, don't worry. Her tribe used all parts of the animal. It wasn't just a fashion statement," the Doctor said.

"Still, it sounds... uncomfortable."

"Yes, they were. Quite."

"So, um..." I was distracted by a disturbing mental image. "Anyways... I forgot something. Something important."

"What's that? Ooh! I found something!"

"McKinley arrives today, but tomorrow he goes to visit Niagara Falls! He doesn't get shot until tomorrow afternoon!"

"Tomorrow? Well, nothing we can do about that. Don't you want to know what I've found?"

I decided to humor him. "Okay, Doc. What did you find?"

"Rutan technology. On the power line. Hang on, I'm trying to get it." I could hear him exert himself, and imagined him climbing a pole.

"Are you climbing a utility pole?"

"Yes... why?"

"Aren't you soaking wet? You'll electrocute yourself! I don't think they insulated the wires that well these days, anyways."

"Excellent point." He was silent for a moment or two. "Do you have a better idea?"

"Hit it with a stick."

"Good plan, monkey man! Score one for the apes!"

"You know, if I was a black man, I'd be offended by your monkey comments."

"You're human; you should be offended anyways. Now where am I going to find a stick, way up here?"

"Way up where?"

"Halfway up the post, of course. Where else would I be?"

"Well, there might be one on the ground..."

"Oh, how silly of me. Of course there are sticks on the _ground_. But I'm not going to climb all the way down _there_ and then climb all the way back up _here_. I'm not built for climbing, you know. _My_ ancestors didn't live in _trees_."

"Well, you know what, Doc? Call me when you find a stick. I'll tell you where to stick it." I closed my phone with a snap.

-=Chapter Twelve=-

I crossed the street amongst the horse-drawn carriages and street vendors, some of whom were just managing to put their stalls back together after the Doctor's hell-ride down the center of the road. As I approached the entrance to the Pan-American Exposition, an electric car hummed down the road and parked directly in front of me. I didn't recognize the driver, but I saw Thomas Edison getting out of the passenger door.

"Mister Edison! Tom!" I said, as I rushed over. "Good morning! How are you today?"

He turned to look at me. "Oh, just dandy. Fine and dandy," he answered sarcastically. "I trust you and the Doctor found another room to sleep in last night? _Without_ blowing it up?"

"Yes, sir. We stayed with a couple of the maids."

"Oh?" His eyebrows shot up. "Maids at a hotel who have their own room at the hotel, inviting strange men to share their beds? For shame, sir. For shame."

I knew what he was getting at. "Are you insinuating..."

"They may not be maids," he grinned broadly. "But Maureen and Hattie provide an excellent service, do they not?" He started to chuckle a bit, his grin taking on a more mischievous slant.

"Oh! Um, uh... we just slept. Well, _I_ slept. The Doctor just sat in a chair all night."

"Yes? Well, he would. I've never seen him sleep." Edison then turned to the driver of the car, and gave him instructions. "Take the camera to the spot where I told you to set it up. I'll be along later to make sure it's ready for the President's arrival."

"Wait, Mister Edison... " I said.

"I told you to call me _Tom_, I believe. Or you can call me Thomas and I'll call you Matthew."

"Tom," I continued, "is that _your_ car?"

"Well, yes. It says _Edison_ on it, doesn't it? My factory built it. Very nice automobile, if I do say so myself." He beamed proudly.

"It's just that... "

"What?"

"The Doctor borrowed a car. He thought it was yours."

"Why would he think that?"

"Well, it said _Edison_ on it."

He clucked his tongue. "Oh, dearie me! So that's where young Mister Park's automobile vanished to! Don't worry, I already promised him a new car from my factory, to replace the stolen one. Best thing to do, considering he's a lawyer. Where did the Doctor take it?"

"To the river."

Edison and I had started walking towards the entrance. "To the river?"

"Well, _in_ the river. He said the floating seats worked great."

Edison stopped walking. "_In_ the river?"

"He said he had trouble with the brakes. And of course he was going 500 miles per hour. Maybe faster." We started walking again.

"Five hundred..." Edison stopped walking again.

"He said he 'tweaked' it," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "He's lucky he didn't kill anybody. Especially himself." We started walking again as Edison drifted into thought.

"Hmmm I suppose I could get an engineer working on that. Make the brakes better, somehow? Uh, you wouldn't happen to have any 21st Century suggestions about how to build automobiles?" He peered at me with a hopeful expression.

"I just drive 'em, I don't build 'em," I replied. We reached the entrance, and Edison waved good-bye as he headed for a separate gate. He was waved through without hesitation. One of the benefits of fame, I figured. Still, it would have been nice if he had let me go through that gate with him.

---

Admission to the Exposition was twenty-five cents, and the Menches Brothers' Original Hamburg Sandwich cost five cents. I had no more dimes. I sat near the temple of Music, where I could see the spot on which the TARDIS had stood. As I bit into the patty, I realized why the sandwich was served with no condiments: it was absolutely delicious, just the way it was. I could detect the flavors of coffee and brown sugar, and various spices. The sandwich came wrapped in a paper napkin, which I needed as much to control my own drool as I did to contain the drippings from the greasy sandwich.

I figured that the Doctor would call me if he found anything else of interest, or if he got lost again. Although, with the car in the river, I doubted that he'd be running around the city quite as quickly as he had been.

"You, there. Move along!" Two Secret Service agents snuck up on me while I was finishing the last bite of my sandwich. I glanced at their feet first to see if they were human. I waved at them with a greasy hand and mumbled through my food as I shook the crumbs out of the napkin. Then I wiped my face and hands, and stood up. They waited patiently for me to dust myself off before the younger one gave me a shooing wave. I wandered off, trying to look like I had a destination, but just circled the big building.

As I came around to the back of the building, I tripped over a soldier, who was sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall.

"Hey!" he yelled.

"Sorry. I'm so sorry. I was just looking for a place to piss, but uh..." I looked around at the hundreds of soldiers who were clustered around me, all in formal uniform and looking very uncomfortable in the morning sun. "You folks got a latrine set up, maybe?"

"We're just here to do a parade, mister. We ain't diggin' in," the young soldier at my feet said. He pulled the brim of his cap further down over his eyes. "Now why don't you just go back around the building? We don't need no civilians gettin' in the way."

I came back around the building and saw some men setting up chairs and banners for the President's speech. I saw Edison fiddling with his camera on a tripod, and wandered over to him.

"Mister Edison!" He ignored me.

"Mister Edison!" He continued to ignore me, and peered through the camera.

"Tom!"

He looked over the top of the camera at me. "Matt! Where's the Doctor? Has he made it here yet?"

"No, I haven't spoken to him for about an hour."

"Tsk, tsk. He's probably dead, then. You should call him. Go stand over there." He waved in the direction of the building, towards the spot where the TARDIS had been.

"All right, I'll call him. He was doing fine last I knew, though." Reluctantly, I pulled my phone from my pocket and started walking that way. Behind me, I heard Edison's camera start whirring. I held my phone where nobody could see it, and pressed the green button twice. As I put it to my ear, I heard a familiar noise.

Razors on guitar strings... with a wa-wa pedal. Turned up to eleven.

Air rushed towards my face, presumably being displaced by the arriving TARDIS. I forgot that I was holding my phone as I reached out wide to hug that big beautiful blue box. Then I dropped my hands as I remembered that Tesla was inside, and there was a good chance that I'd have to fight him. I wondered what I could use as a weapon, if I needed one.

The TARDIS finished materializing in front of me. The door swung open almost immediately. I saw a shock of black hair poke out around the door frame, followed by a pair of bloodshot eyes. He looked frantically about, and locked his eyes on me as he stepped from the TARDIS.

"Freeze, or I'll shoot!" I said, pointing my phone at him. "This is a Death Ray from the future!"

"Oh, brilliant plan," I heard the Doctor's voice come from the phone. "Death Ray from the future? Is that the best you can come up with?"

"Quiet, you!" I hissed at the phone.

"Hey, you called _me_. Shall I start making Death Ray noises now? _PEW PEW_!!!"

Tesla wasn't buying it. He stepped closer to me, took the phone from my hand, and put it to his ear. "Doctor?" he said, in his thick accent.

"Hello, Nikola. Did you have a pleasant trip?" I heard the Doctor say.

He screamed and threw my phone at me. Then he ran away, still screaming, through the crowd.

I noticed that the two Secret Service agents had come back, and were watching us. One of them followed Tesla; the other came over towards me. I picked up my phone; thank goodness the Exposition was paved with mud and straw, and not concrete. I brushed it off and put it back in my pocket as the Secret Service agent stepped up.

"Let me see that," he said, pointing at my pocket.

"See what?" I said.

"The thing you just put in your pocket. Hand it over." He stood close to me. Strangely, he smelled really good. Not like anybody else I had encountered in this decade.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He grabbed my arm and very quickly put me in a half-nelson, twisting my shoulder. An old work-related injury flared up with new pain, and I yelped in agony. "Which one are you with? I have to know!"

"Which one which?" I gasped in pain as he twisted my shoulder more.

"_Which Doctor_?" He bent me over further and reached into my pocket, grabbing my phone. He flipped it open and released me as he started flipping through my contact list. "No! No! _No_!!!" he cried.

"What?"

"Wrong number. Damn it! Wrong _Doctor_!" He seemed very upset as he took off his bowler hat and sat on the ground in front of the TARDIS. "Damn it, Doctor! Where are you?"

"Wait, you know the Doctor?" I asked, moving closer to the man, who was now sobbing.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have hurt you like that. I just needed to know." He handed me my phone back.

"Who are you?" I offered him my hand to help him back to his feet. He grasped it with a firm grip and pulled himself up, effortlessly.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said, turning my helping hand into a handshake. "51st Century Time Agent, currently stranded in the primitive past. And you are?"

"Matt Schoaff. 21st Century truck driver and amateur historian."

"Ooh, a truck driver!" he felt my biceps. "Lots of heavy lifting? Big packages? Nice beard, by the way. I've been thinking about growing out the sideburns; what do you think?"

I pulled my hand away. "So how do you know the Doctor?"

"We traveled together, for a while. Him and me and Rose. Is Rose still with him?"

"No, just me."

"Oh," he sounded disappointed. "He's certainly traded down, hasn't he? Rose was _hot_."

"So, wait a second. I thought you were Secret Service?"

"Special assignment from Torchwood. Undercover work, if you know what I mean." He smiled again. "I'm the closest thing they have to an American, so they sent _me_. I'm actually more of a freelance agent right now, just killing time until I can find the Doctor. _My_ Doctor."

"Well, he's on the other side of town right now." I had heard of Torchwood. Somebody on one of my forums brought them up during some discussion about aliens. Some lady named Linda... no, wait, I remember now: she spelled it Li'n'da. I wondered whatever happened to her. Now I regretted calling her a crackpot conspiracy theorist. "So, uh... what's Torchwood?"

"Sort of like alien hunters... and that's the _wrong_ Doctor. I know his mobile number; he wouldn't change it unless he changed _himself_, you know what I mean? Or don't you?"

"I called his number earlier and got the wrong Doctor, too. Him and some lady named Leela of the Sevateem." So Torchwood was real, and they chase aliens! I wondered if he was looking for the Doctor just so they could kill him and dissect him. I hoped not; Jack seemed like a nice guy.

He smiled. "Leela of the leather knickers? Shame I missed _her_." He punched me lightly on the arm and wiggled his eyebrows. "But that wasn't _my_ Doctor, either. There's ten or eleven different versions of him running around the Universe, back and forth through time and space..."

"That's the regeneration thing he was talking about... growing new bodies or something like that. That's how he's lived so long, right?"

"Well, it's not like that, but yeah, sort of. He gets a new body every time he dies. Not like me. I just can't die."

"You... you can't die?" My jaw dropped. It seemed like everybody I met on this trip was not who they seemed at first glance. The Doctor was an alien. The box was a spaceship. Edison smelled of whiskey and cigars. Horace was an anarchist. The maids were prostitutes. And I knew that the Mister Statler who owned the Greystone Hotel was in no way, shape, or form related to the Statler who owned the much larger and fancier Statler Hotel. Well, at least Tesla had seemed just as insane as I had imagined him to be. And the Rutans... well, they were never who they seemed at first glance, were they? I took another glance at Jack's shoes. _Very_ stylish, and on the right feet. "Why can't you die? How'd that happen?"

"I don't know."

---

Jack and I entered the TARDIS, which Tesla had left unlocked. He was telling me a story about a Slitheen named Margaret, when he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"He's redecorated!" he said. "This used to be all coral!"

"Really? Coral?" I touched the shiny metal column. "Sounds... very nautical. But then again, the whole place _is_ laid out like a seashell."

"A seashell? Huh, I never thought of it that way." He went over to the console and touched a switch, whch turned on the screen. We could see what was directly outside the TARDIS, including the men who were still preparing for the President. "So what brings you here, of all places?"

"Rutans."

"Rutans! Nasty green blobs of hate and destruction! One of my least favorite creatures in the Universe. What are they doing here?"

I hesitated to tell him too much. "Uh, not much. Just being nasty green globs. You know."

"Aw, come on, you can tell _me_." He moved closer to me and placed his arm arond my shoulders. He smelled really good. I wondered what cologne he used. I felt compelled to trust him, despite my misgivings about his intentions towards the Doctor.

"Okay, okay. Tomorrow the President is going to get shot."

"I know that," he said, matter-of-factly. "I'm not looking forward to it, either. Remember, I'm from the future, too. Tell me more."

"Yeah, but there's a Rutan who's impersonating Teddy Roosevelt. I think their plan is to wait until McKinley dies and then replace Roosevelt with the imposter."

"Not a bad plan... wait, wait, wait. You and I both know about the assassination. We're from the future."

"Yeah, I know." I didn't get where he was going with this. "And?"

"_Rutans don't have time travel_." He looked into my eyes, waiting for me to recognize what he was saying.

"Oh, crap." A chill ran down my spine. "How do they know about it, then?"

Jack answered me by picking up the laptop. "Two questions: 1) where did Tesla go, and 2) you got anything interesting in here?"

"Pictures of the Doctor and his friends, and the TARDIS. He's got one of those electronic picture frame things over there on that little table by the big comfy chair," I pointed towards the corner of the room, near the door. "Apparently they were all copied from it. He showed me all of the pictures, and they matched."

"There's no picture frame on that table," Jack said.

"What?" I looked. He was right; the picture frame was missing.

"No picture frame. I remember it, though; there's some cute girls in those pictures. Cute guys, too. You see the scotsman with the kilt?" He acted as though his hand was on fire as he mouthed the word "_hot_."

"Yeah, okay, whatever floats your boat, Cap'n. There were some videos, too."

"Videos?" He perked up his ears. "What kind of... videos?" He smiled.

"Edison's movies. Vitoscopic recordings, he calls them. Taken here, at the Exposition."

"Am I in any of them?"

"Check and see." I motioned towards the laptop. He opened it and tried to turn it on.

"Battery's dead. Let me see... there's a power supply around here somewhere..." He pulled a wire out of the TARDIS console and plugged it into the laptop. It came to life, and displayed an error screen. Jack tapped away at the keyboard for a few moments before he slammed the lid shut. "Empty."

"Empty?"

"The hard drive's been wiped. There's nothing in here."

---

"Okay, so here's my theory," I said, as I paced the control room. Jack sat on the railing, smoking one of my cigarettes. "Tesla went to the Rutan planet, somehow. He finds himself surrounded by electric space boogers..."

"Electric space boogers?" He snorted smoke out his nose.

"Quiet! He freaks out and throws the picture frame at them; it's conveniently located near the door. Well, it was, anyways. That's how they got the pictures."

"And the laptop?" He blew smoke rings at me; he was very good at making smoke rings.

"They're electric. Maybe they fried it accidentally. Or they took the files off it somehow. The Doctor said they could control electrical systems."

"Right! And these coordinates," he pointed at part of a display on the TARDIS console, "indicate that wherever he went, it was the year 1792 AD, Earth time. 109 years ago. I don't know what the rest of these numbers mean, though..."

"109 years? Wait, that's got to be more than a coincidence. I'm from 2010, and the Rutans are there, too. 109 years from now."

Jack blinked. "That's a very odd number."

"Very odd, indeed," the Doctor said, as he entered the TARDIS with a chicken under his arm. "You, _get out_!" He pointed at Jack.

"Wait, Doc... it _is_ you, right, Doc? Do you remember me? Or am I in your future?" Jack ran to greet him, but stopped when he saw the expression on the Doctor's face.

"Oh, I remember you. _Out_!" The Doctor advanced on him, and grabbed him by his jacket collar.

"You know, you look really good! Very young, very fit." Jack didn't fight him as he was led towards the door. "Just do me one favor before you kick me out! Tell me what happened to me. Why can't I die?_"_ Jack fell to his knees by the TARDIS door, holding the Doctor's hand.

"No." the Doctor snapped his fingers, and the TARDIS doors opened.

Jack got up reluctantly and stepped outside, slapping his bowler hat on his head again. He turned back to face the Doctor. "You've changed. And not just your face. What happened to you? What happened to Rose? Tell me!"

"I already explained it to you _once_, I'm not going to do it again."

"You did? When?" Jack stuck his hands in his pockets, looking confused.

"My past, your future. You're just going to have to _wait_."

"I don't want to wait. Why can't I come with you? Could you at least fix my vortex manipulator so I can jump ahead to the good parts?"

"No, Jack. You have things to do in this century. Important things." The Doctor stood with his arms crossed in the doorway, holding the chicken tight. It clucked in protest. "You've become a permanent part of the timeline, and I can't change that."

"Just tell me one thing. _One_ thing. Why'd you leave me behind?"

"You're _wrong_, Jack. So wrong. We'll talk again, someday. Go back to Cardiff. You know the spot."

"So I'll see you again?" Jack was on the verge of tears.

"No, not me. The me I used to be. Like I said, it's already happened, in my past. Just be patient; you have all the time in the Universe."

"Good-bye, Doctor."

"Good-bye, Jack. Now go away and don't come back. And when you see me again, don't mention that you saw me here. I always hated spoilers." The Doctor closed the door to the TARDIS, and hung his head in silence. I watched Jack walk away on the screen.

"Doc? You okay?" I asked.

"Not now." The Doctor lifted his head, and slowly turned back to face the interior of the TARDIS. "I'm going to take a shower."

---

The Doctor was in the shower for over two hours. I found the chicken wandering in the hall, and wondered what he intended to do with it. Maybe he had finally found a companion that he'd never have to forcefully kick out of the TARDIS.

On the screen in the console room, I watched the military parade, trying to recognize the soldier over whom I had tripped. I didn't see him. It took me a little while to figure out which of the men standing with their back to me was the President. Once I recognized him, though, I watched him like a hawk. I couldn't figure out how to turn on the audio, so I watched him give his speech in silence. I didn't see Jack again.

"So, you've met Captain Jack." The Doctor had snuck up behind me. He had changed his clothes, and they were even less stylish than his previous outfit.

"What's he the Captain of? The Gay Men's Choir?" I asked, jokingly.

"Don't you start, now!" He wagged his finger at me accusingly. "He's from a different time. They don't have any understanding of sexual orientation in the 51st Century. Completely different rules."

"So that isn't why you kicked him out? I thought maybe..." I shrugged. I had no idea why the Doctor had evicted Jack, and I didn't really think it had anything to do with his excessive affection.

"No! That's not why. He's just not supposed to be here, that's all. And yet, he must be." The Doctor looked at his jacket by the console glow, and frowned. "This jacket has a hole in the sleeve."

"What do you mean, he's not supposed to be here?" I followed him as he crossed the room to the big chair.

He sat down, opened the drawer on the little table beside it, and pulled out a small sewing kit. "He's not supposed to be _anywhere_, really. He's just... _wrong_." The Doctor threaded a needle and started sewing the sleeve of his jacket, while still wearing the jacket.

"What do you mean, _wrong_?"

The Doctor stopped sewing. "Look, here. I'm using the wrong color thread. Now, watch." He yanked on the thread he was using for the repair, and it tore through the fabric, leaving a bigger hole. "Jack Harkness is a stitch in time. He became part of this timeline, and for that reason I can't yank him out until the right time. Possibly never. Or else..." he stuck his finger through the hole and wiggled it at me. "Redrum! Redrum!"

-=Chapter Thirteen=-

"So Jack and I were theorizing..." I started to say.

"_Theorizing_? So that's what he calls it? I thought he was just convincing you to tell him everything he wanted to know." The Doctor was finishing the minor repair to his sleeve. He had decided to patch it with a piece of his sock. The fabric did not match.

I leaned back in the barstool by the console, putting my arms on the railing behind me. "What did he want to know?"

"Oh, the usual. He wanted to know what _I_ know." He put the jacket back on and frowned at his handiwork. He pulled off the jacket and sat back down, pulling up his pant leg to collect a swatch of the other sock. The two socks did not match each other, either. I wondered if he was color-blind.

"And what do _you_ know?" I asked, hoping that I was leading him into telling me.

"Oh, I know a _lot_. I know what you'll eat for breakfast on your seventy-fifth birthday. I helped you find your father in a crowded store when you were five." He started cutting his sock with a large, ornate pair of scissors. "I attended a seminar on advanced mathematics that was held by your mother in 1992... and she's _good_. Pity none of that mathematical genius rubbed off on _you_, though."

"Hey, I'm pretty smart. I just hate math. With a passion."

"Purely psychological." He had finished cutting the piece of sock, and started sewing it over the other patch. "If you didn't hate being smart, you'd be a whiz."

I had nothing to say in response. I knew what he was saying. He was saying the same thing every psychologist I'd ever seen had told me. I was afraid of success. I was scared of being smart because that meant I might be successful. I avoided my responsibilities because I couldn't bear the thought of being expected to actually fulfill those responsibilities. I avoided making friends because friendship entails responsibility.

"You want to know what else I know?"

I considered my words carefully as I tried to construct a sentence that would include every vulgarity in the human language. But all I could say was, "No."

"Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyways!" He jumped up and started bouncing on the big, wing-backed chair. "_I know where the Rutans are_!" he sang, tauntingly.

I pushed off from the railing and leaped to my feet as the barstool righted itself. "Where?"

"Well, technically, I know where they _were_." He stopped bouncing. "They were in a building near the river. Part of the electrical system system that's bringing electricity from Niagara Falls to Buffalo for the Exposition."

"But they're not there any more?"

"Well, eight of them aren't." He sat down and looked sad. "I had to kill them. There was no sign of the little 'q' queen, though. She's around, somewhere."

"How'd you kill them? With fire?" I sat back down on the stool.

"No, no. Simple biochemistry. I used a pencil and an egg yolk to make a room-temperature localized superconducting graphite-sulfur composite, which I then applied to the skin of the sleeping Rutans by means of a handheld elastic projectile device." He pulled a slingshot from his back pocket and put it on the table. "Upon the release of the compound from its containment shell, the flow of current from the transformer to the creatures was greatly increased, beyond their capacity for absorption."

"Then what happened?"

"They went boom." He mimed a series of small explosions with his hands. "Pow, pa-pow pow pow!"

"You killed them with a slingshot and an egg?" I didn't know whether or not I should believe him. I guessed anything was possible with the Doctor.

"An egg with a pencil in it!" He reached into a pocket of the jacket he was repairing and withdrew a golf pencil. On the side I could see the words embossed in shiny letters: _Luna City Mini-Golf_. I wondered what mini-golf was like on the moon. "Lunar graphite. Slightly radioactive... which doesn't bother me but it might bother you so I should put this pencil away."

"Did you find their ship?"

"Oh, yes! It was easy to find. I drove the car into it." He smiled.

"Well that was lucky!"

"Not so lucky for the Rutans! It's amazing how much damage Tom's car did to it. Cracked it like... well, like an egg."

I stood up and walked over to him. "I hate to tell you this, but... that wasn't Tom's car."

He looked up at me, surprised. "Whose was it?"

"I think Tom said he was a lawyer. Some guy named Park."

"Oh, well. No harm, then." He stood up and put the jacket back on. The patch-on-top-of-another-patch looked terrible. "Well? How's it look?"

"Um... great?"

"Liar." He smiled.

---

"So Jack and I were theorizing..." I started to say.

"You said that before," the Doctor interrupted.

"And I was interrupted before. Come over here and look at these coordinates."

The Doctor stopped fiddling with the useless laptop computer and walked over to the console. "Oh! Now that's an amazing coincidence!"

"What's that?"

"The coordinates for the den of the Great Mother Queen on Ruta III in the Earth year 1792. But that's not the coincidence!"

"What's the coincidence?"

"It's the coordinates to your back yard in 2010, except completely in reverse. Completely. Reversed." He scratched his head in bewilderment. "How the blazes did I do _that_?"

"Wait, _you_ did it? How?"

"I locked the coordinates on the TARDIS before we left. I knew Tesla was going to take it, and I planned on sending him to visit _you_, on March 12th, 2010."

"Why? Why then? Why _me_?"

"Birthday present? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But now it appears that I caused this whole mess to begin with."

I glanced at the screen on the console, which was again showing the exterior of the TARDIS. I thought I had seen somebody walking nearby, in the shadows. It was late now, and the Exposition was shut down for the night. "Yeah, that kind of fits my theory. Tesla ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and somehow they got all the information they needed to formulate a plan. They know about the assassination ahead of time because of us."

"Right. But why bother? Why would they wait 109 years to implement a plot involving subterfuge and painful metamorphosis, when they could easily conquer this planet with brute force?"

"109 years twice."

"Eh?"

"109 years between when they got the information and when they could use it. 109 years between then and when we met in 2010. That's a lot of waiting. How long do Rutans live?"

"Oh, about the same as humans. Maybe a little longer. Their year is about the same length, too."

"Maybe about 109 years?" I was fishing for answers.

"One-oh-nine. One-oh-nine. One hundred and nine. What's so special about 109?" He started pacing back and forth in the control room again. "It's not just a number, is it? Must be something special."

"Well, it's a prime number." I said, trying to be helpful.

"Yes, yes, yes. Obviously it's a prime number. That's not important." He paced some more, then came to the steps. He stepped gingerly down the steps, then back up, then sideways down and up, making it into a crazy dance. Halfway up, he stopped. Then he went down one step, stopped, and then came all the way back up and spun around. "I've got it!"

"What? Happy feet?"

"No! It's a prime number!"

"I said that."

"No, you didn't, you said... oh, wait, yes you did. _Sorry_!" He started pushing buttons on the console, and a mathematical formula appeared on the screen. "But it's not just a prime number! It's a centered triangular prime number! Three N squared plus three N plus two end parentheses divided by two... the third number in the sequence of centered triangular prime numbers is 109!"

"So what does that mean to the Rutans?" I felt like I was in math class again, failing to understand what the teacher was trying, in vain, to teach me.

"Their culture is ruled by electrical energy and mathematics. Prime numbers are sacred to them. Centered triangular prime numbers doubly so... well, actually, triply so." He scratched his head, "Nontupily so? No, that's not right. I wish I could remember their sanctity formulae!"

"So they waited 109 years for _religious_ reasons? Because they worship numbers?"

"Precisely!" The Doctor struck a pose indicative of the grandeur of his deduction, which looked like he was imitating John Travolta from _Saturday Night Fever_. I heard the jacket rip.

---

The Doctor settled down in his chair with a thick book while I went looking for a place to sleep. He was letting the chicken roost in one of the round cupboards in the control room. I passed the bathroom and the kitchen and the billiards room... how many rooms were there? The hallway stretched before me but I couldn't see the end of it because of the way it curved. The next room, just past the garbage and laundry bins, was the wardrobe. I thought about wandering in there to find a fresh shirt, but decided against it. I didn't think anything the Doctor owned would fit me properly.

I opened the next door and was surprised by the brightness of the light. The whole room was taken up by a hydroponic garden. There were tomatoes and carrots and celery and eggplant and peppers... and right in the middle of the room, there was a banana tree. I turned back to the hallway and closed the door. So there _was_ food on the TARDIS, after all. I went back in and grabbed a banana, for later.

Further down the hall, I opened a door and found a bedroom, of sorts. Six slanted benches lined the wall. One of them had a blanket and pillow on it. I walked over to that one, and laid down on it. The bench responded to my weight by gently reclining back, and becoming softer beneath me. I felt it grow warmer, and noticed that the part directly beneath my head had inflated like a pillow. It was definitely more comfortable than it looked.

I fell asleep.

---

I awoke to the Doctor banging two cooking pots together, and singing a marching song as he marched through the room. I guess it was time to get up. I shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, eating the banana for breakfast. After a visit to the toilet and a hot shower, I wondered if I could find some clean clothes. I wandered down to the wardrobe, clutching my towel around me. The towel was oversized, nice and fluffy, and had Scooby-Doo printed on it. I think I had one just like it when I was a kid. It had been the only towel hanging in the bathroom when I got out of the shower, though. I dropped my dirty t-shirt, socks, and underwear in the laundry bin in the hallway.

Just inside the wardrobe room, I noticed a chest of drawers. I wondered what the doctor hid in his sock drawer. To my disappointment, all I found were socks. All different kinds of socks. There was one pair, right on top, that looked just like the socks I usually wore. I grabbed them.

The underwear drawer held a variety of different men's undergarments. Boxers, briefs, boxer briefs, sparkly thongs, swimming trunks... I selected a pair of briefs that looked to be about my size, which once again were right on top.

The next drawer was full of t-shirts, of various colors and materials. Right on top was a shirt exactly the same as the shirt I had just been wearing. I grabbed that one. After I got dressed, the Doctor was waiting for me in the control room. He had changed his clothes again, and looked slightly more normal... but still a bit strange.

"Ready to go find some Rutans?" he asked, smiling like the crocodile that swallowed the cat that swallowed the canary. "I'm not sure how many are left, though. Little 'q' queens tend to control broods of sixteen drones, and we've killed that many drones already."

"Well, it's been hours since we saw her last. Maybe she grew some new ones?" I was doing my best to comb my hair with my fingers. The Doctor reached in a pocket and pulled out a plastic comb, which he tossed to me.

"Not likely. Their ship is gone, and the mothership was destroyed over Fang Rock... she's stuck here. And I think I found and disabled every piece of Rutan tech in the city, so she doesn't have a power converter any more. No converter, no new Rutan drones."

"So basically we have one Rutan to find and kill." I finished combing my hair and beard, and handed the comb back to the Doctor. He handled it like it was something nasty, and carefully put it back in his pocket.

"Unless she can build a power converter. But she'd need a lot of technical bits and pieces. Vacuum tubes, most likely, in this decade. I doubt she could find them at a local hardware store. Well, then, shall we?" He gestured towards the door.

"Sure. By the way, what time is it? All of your clocks show different times."

"Oh, it's about..." he was interrupted by the sound of a rooster crowing outside, "Dawn. Ish."

The chicken started clucking excitedly, in her drawer near the floor. "So what are you going to do with the chicken?" I asked.

"I don't know. Maybe I'll keep her! I like eggs." The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors, and stepped out into the chilly morning air. "She needs a name, though. If she's staying, that is. I can't just call her 'chicken.' Certainly not 'chook' or 'chicky,' either."

"I thought you didn't eat meat."

"Eggs aren't meat," he said, as he peered out into the morning fog.

"Well, sort of. I guess you're not a vegan, are you?"

"Certainly _not_! Vegans have one eye, in the middle of their foreheads. And they _love_ eggs! Wonderful omelets on Vega. But the service was lousy and the coffee was cold."

I followed the Doctor outside. The Exposition was still fairly empty, but a few vendors and demonstrators were moving about in both horse-drawn wagons and push-carts, on their way to set up their stands. I noticed a man running in our general direction, but couldn't tell who it was. The fog was thick enough to obscure distant details.

"Doctor, who's that?" I asked, pointing out the running man.

"It's your old friend Professor Roentgen, I believe! I wonder what's got him all in a tizzy?"

When Roentgen drew nearer, I called out to him. "Professor! Over here!"

Professor Roentgen changed direction and came directly to us. He was out of breath. "Mathias! Have you... have you seen any policemen around? My X-Ray machine was vandalized overnight! I can not believe this has happened, on today of all days! The President was going to come see my machine today, and hear my presentation on the medical use of the X-Ray!"

I turned to the Doctor. "Technical bits and pieces? Vacuum tubes?"

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, I was right! She didn't get them at a hardware store!" He turned to the Professor, and said, "Let's go see your machine." I made sure the TARDIS was locked before we set off towards the area where Roentgen and others were displaying the latest innovations in technology and science.

---

As we approached the technology pavilion, the fog seemed to grow thicker. "That's odd," said the Professor, as he led the way. "I thought today was going to be another glorious day, like yesterday. It was so nice. I watched the parade. Did you watch the parade? The American army looked ridiculous, tripping over their own feet. Not like the German army, not at all. Well, here we are!" He pointed at his wrecked machine.

The Doctor started poking around inside the X-Ray machine, as the Professor provided plenty of unwanted supervision. I looked around for suspicious Rutan-like activity as he exclaimed "Don't touch _that_!" and "Please _do_ be careful!" several times. Everybody I saw had their feet on the right legs, including the Professor and the Doctor.

After a few minutes, I started to get bored. The fog was getting thicker, and chilly. I started to shiver in just a t-shirt and jeans. "Doc? I'm going back to the TARDIS for my coat, okay?"

The Doctor and Roentgen both muttered at me, and waved without looking up from the ruined machine.

I started off into the fog, certain that I knew the way back, but soon found myself in front of vendors' tables that I didn't recognize. A lady was setting up a table full of blocks of cheese, and she offered me a free sample. I thanked her for the small hunk of cheese, and asked her for directions to the Temple of Music, where the TARDIS was parked. She had trouble pointing out the landmarks in the fog, but she knew that if I could find the Hamburg Sandwich stand, I was on the right path. I just had to follow the scent of burgers.

I went in the direction she indicated, and soon saw flames ahead of me in the fog. The Menches brothers were cooking up the first batch of patties for the day. As I approached, one of them called out to me, asking if I'd like to try a sandwich to see if the meat was properly cooked. I agreed, and it was.

I was pretty sure which way to go from the burger stand to the TARDIS, so I started heading that way. I realized that I had a hunk of cheddar cheese in one hand and an Original Hamburg Sandwich in the other hand. I slipped the cheese between the hot patty and the top slice of bread, and kept walking. I had only taken a few bites of my incredibly delicious cheeseburger when I spotted the TARDIS ahead of me. I quickened my pace.

Suddenly, the TARDIS' lights came on. I saw a man standing in front of the TARDIS. As I drew closer, I could see that it was the Doctor.

"Doctor! I got lost in the fog, and invented cheeseburgers! And it's _good_." I took another bite of cheeseburger heaven as I walked up to him.

The Doctor turned to face me. "Open the TARDIS," he said, flatly.

"Uh, my hands are full of yummy delicious cheeseburger. I'd just get the handle greasy," I said, around the food I was chewing.

"Open the TARDIS," he repeated. "Now."

"Okay, okay, hang on," I said, as I balanced the messy sandwich in my left hand. I tried to fish the key out of my hip pocket with my greasy right hand, but dropped it in the dirt. I groaned as I bent over to pick it up.

That's when I noticed that the Doctor had his shoes on the wrong feet.

-=Chapter Fourteen=-

"What's all this, then, eh?" Patrolman James Patrick O'Malley of the Buffalo Police Department came up behind the Doctor look-a-like, swinging his billy club. "It's th' two arrrsonists who escaped from th' lockup shed! I've been lookin' fer you two! All right! Up against th' wall!" He grabbed the disguised Rutan by the back of the neck, and was instantly electrocuted. He fell to the ground, dead.

The Doctor/Rutan never took its eyes off me. "Open the TARDIS."

From out of the fog, I could hear a familiar whistling noise. The Doctor... the _real_ Doctor... appeared at my side, his sonic screwdriver held before him. The Rutan fell backwards, and glowed bright green. It contorted its copy of the Doctor's face into a caricature of anger.

"Micro-millimeter wave," he explained. "Remember the cigarette burn? I widened the field a bit."

The Rutan flailed about in the mud and straw, suffering unimaginable pain. The Doctor shut off his screwdriver, and the Rutan stopped moving. It reverted to its natural form, which looked like a glowing green wad of chewed bubble gum that got stuck to a handful of spaghetti. It pulsed with energy. Some makeshift device lay on the ground beside it, covered with vacuum tubes and other electronic thingamajigs.

"YOU HAVE KILLED OUR BROOD," it said, in that high-pitched bubbly voice. "YOU HAVE DESTROYED OUR SHIP. WE HAVE BEEN CUT OFF FROM THE HOST. THE POWER CONVERTER DOES NOT WORK. WE ARE ALONE."

"I can take you home," the Doctor said, keeping his screwdriver leveled at the Rutan. "Or I can destroy you. Your mission is finished, either way."

"Kill it," I said. I tried to gesture with my left hand and discovered that I was still holding half a cheeseburger. I took a bite.

"_What is that_?" The Doctor asked me.

"Wha?" I responded, my mouth full.

"Is that a _cheeseburger_?"

"Um..." I swallowed. "Yes?"

"Did I or did I _not_ tell you... _Hold it right there, mister_!" He pointed his screwdriver at the Rutan again, who was starting to slither away. "Oh, no! Not again!"

"In this fog, nobody's going to notice my sandwich."

"That's not the point. Have you had your cholesterol checked lately? Now, Rutan! Make your decision! Go home, and never return to the Planet Earth, or die now!" The Doctor gave the Rutan a look that chilled my blood.

"WE... WE WILL GO HOME. YOU MAY TAKE US HOME, DOCTOR. WE SHALL NEVER RETURN TO THIS PLANET."

"Good choice," the Doctor said, producing a TARDIS key from his pocket. "Do you have a name, or shall I just call you Rutan?"

"Wait, you can't be serious," I said, stepping between the Doctor and the TARDIS. "We are _not_ giving that thing a ride home. Even if it doesn't kill us on the way there, we'll die as soon as we arrive."

"Don't worry, Matt. I know what I'm doing. Now come along. Unless you'd rather stay here in 1901?"

"No way," I responded. I stepped back and let him open the TARDIS.

"Matt, you first! Down the hall to the wardrobe; you'll find what you need. Go!"

I ran into the TARDIS, almost tripping over the chicken on my way through the control room. The air inside the TARDIS smelled like chicken feces. I gagged a bit as I jogged down the hall to the wardrobe. As soon as I walked in, I saw what I needed. A pair of fisherman's waders and a matching jacket, made entirely of rubber, hung on a pair of hangars near the door. A pair of rubber gloves sat on top of the chest of drawers. I hastily pulled it all on, and then noticed a hat that matched the outfit. I squeaked and creaked my way back to the control room.

The Doctor was leading the Rutan inside. It had taken on human form again, and was carrying its makeshift device close to its chest. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was now copying _me_. As soon as it cleared the threshold, the device lit up. The Rutan started glowing brightly, and spread it arms wide as if it was being pushed back by a great wind.

"Stop it! Whatever you're doing, _stop it_!" The Doctor tried zapping it with the screwdriver a few times, to no avail. The Rutan swung its free arm forward, and it turned into a tendril as it stretched out to touch the Doctor. The tendril wrapped around his hand, and I heard a loud buzzing noise as the Doctor fell to the floor, motionless.

"SO MUCH ENERGY! WE SHALL GROW A NEW BROOD! WE SHALL CONTROL A BROOD OF A HUNDRED AND NINE TIMES A HUNDRED AND NINE. WE SHALL BE A NEW GREAT MOTHER QUEEN AND WE SHALL RULE THIS PLANET!"

The Rutan advanced towards me, where I stood near the door. I felt a tendril bounce harmlessly off my rubberized chest. It lashed out with its electrified tendril again, and I caught it in my rubber-gloved hand. It screamed as I squeezed the tendril tight with both hands, wrapping it around my hands like a rope. I took one step back and gave the thin piece of Rutan flesh a good yank.

The Rutan lost its human form completely and dropped its power converter, as it rolled around the TARDIS control room in agony. The tendril I was holding had ripped completely off its body, and fluorescent green blood was spraying from the wound in every direction. It screamed for several minutes, until it finally lay still on its back, slowly pulsing green.

"WHY? _WHY_?" I heard it say. It was covered in its own blood. From this angle, I could see all of its internal organs through its translucent belly. I could also see the enlarged brain sac that the Doctor had described.

"Welcome to Earth," I said. I lifted my big rubber boot and kicked it right in the sac.

---

The Doctor woke up, after a while. I wasn't too surprised that he had survived the Rutan's attack, but I didn't know how long it would take him to recover. I was sitting on the railing, smoking a cigarette, with the Rutan under my boot when he woke up.

He looked around, saw the Rutan, and jumped away. "Is she dead?" he asked, looking scared.

"I think so. Want to make sure?" I put my cigarette out in the Rutan's flesh. The skin sizzled as the hot embers touched it. The Rutan did not react.

"Stop that! How _could_ you? That's, that's... _inhumane_!"

"No, sir," I said, as I considered the green goo that covered the end of my cigarette. "It is _not_ humane. But it is _very_ human."

The Doctor gave me a cold, hard stare. Then he straightened his tie, and cleared his throat. "I'm taking you home."

---

Once we were in flight, the Doctor brought the TARDIS to a halt. He opened the doors. Outside I could see flashes of colored light, swirling around crazily. I closed my eyes as he kicked the Rutan corpse out the door. "_Into_ the Time Vortex with you, there you go!" He stood by the door for a moment longer. "Wow, that's a long way down. Looooong way down." He tore a button off his coat and dropped it out the door, whistling like a falling bomb. "Long way down."

He suddenly turned and closed the door, then walked slowly back to the console. "Well, I suppose you had no choice. I should have realized that she was lying about her power converter not working. Rutans can make nukes out of pencil shavings; they can certainly make a power converter. But of course she was no longer interested in mere electrical energy. She wanted the power of the TARDIS."

"Well, thank you for the rubber suit. I would have been dead without it. _You're_ lucky to have survived, though."

"Thank the TARDIS. She always provides what is needed most. Well, so far as clothes go, anyways. Like the dirties being instantly laundered? You can wear the same thing every day if you want. Sometimes I do."

"So... I'm going home now."

"Well, not yet. We're not done with the Rutans. Remember? Sixteen Rutan drones and another little 'q' queen who likes to dress up as Barack Obama?"

"Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! So what's our plan?"

"No plan." He started making adjustments to the controls.

"No plan?"

"Nope!" He double-checked the coordinates and pumped a bicycle air pump a few times.

"Do we at least have some weapons that we could use against them?"

"Nope! No weapons. Never use them." He flipped a few switches on the console.

"So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know. And that's half the fun!" He put his hand on the hand-brake.

"What's the other half?" I looked at him, my brow furreled. He just smiled back.

Then he released the brake.

---

The TARDIS finally stopped spinning and tumbling. I felt like I was going to lose my cheeseburger, and slowly pulled myself off the floor.

"Here we are! Two Thousand and Ten! London, England!" The Doctor threw open the door. A humanoid figure, covered in shiny black from head to toe and carrying an automatic weapon, stood before us. We both froze in our tracks.

"Mmmph, mmmph-mmph! Mmmph mmph!" the figure said, raising its hand in greeting.

"What?" The Doctor said.

The person put his weapon down and pulled off the black mask. It was a dark-haired man with sideburns, a little younger than me. "Hi, Doctor! It's me! Ianto!"

"Ianto Jones! How are you!" The Doctor slapped him on the shoulder in greeting. Ianto grimaced and rubbed his shoulder. "So where's Jack?"

"Right here!" Captain Jack Harkness entered the huge room from the sliding door, similarly dressed in black rubber. This time, we had arrived near the door, rather than in the middle of the room. "Doctor! Good to see you again!"

"Good to see _you_! So... what brings you here?"

"Rutans! What, you thought I was going to forget running into you in 1901? Or that I could ever forget this beefcake you've got with you!" He punched me in the arm. "Ooh! I forgot how solid those muscles are! I'll bet you could pick me up and throw me, couldn't you?"

"Don't tempt me," I said, as I looked around at all the open trap-doors. At least I knew that they had checked the lower level.

"Jack, why are you all wearing those ridiculous outfits?" The Doctor asked.

"Non-conductive. So the Rutans couldn't electrocute us. It also neutralized their energy weapons."

"But you can't die. Why are you wearing one?"

Jack flexed his muscles. It was clearly obvious that he was naked beneath the skintight rubber. "Do you need to ask?"

"Jack, stop," the Doctor said. "Don't."

"Doc, I can handle him," I said. I looked Jack right in the eye and said, "Jack, you're a nice guy, but... you're just not my cup of tea."

"A cup of tea! Splendid idea!" Ianto ran off, slightly flustered.

"Ianto!" I yelled after him, "Coffee for me! Black!"

"Got it!" I heard him call back, from the hallway.

"So, Jack," the Doctor said. "Did you get all the Rutans?"

"Yup! All sixteen of them!"

"Sixteen?" The Doctor asked.

"Yeah, sixteen. Why?"

"The queen."

"The Queen?" Jack looked confused.

"The queen. Spelled with a little 'q'. Or did you forget about her?"

---

The Doctor and I were ordered to stay with the TARDIS while the Torchwood people ran around, trying to find the queen. There were four of them, I think, all dressed in that tight black rubber. A couple of them were women. The suits looked good on them.

One of the Torchwood women ventured over. "Doctor?" she asked, as she removed her mask. It was a black girl, with long straight hair. "Is that really you, Doctor?" She had a british accent, of course.

"Hello, Martha," the Doctor said. "_Torchwood? _Really?"

"Hey, _you_ founded it. Got no-one but yourself to blame for it."

"Queen Victoria founded it. _After _I saved her from a werewolf. Its original purpose was to protect the British Empire from _me_." The Doctor looked angry. "Don't accuse me of being responsible for Torchwood."

"Sorry," she said, looking sheepish.

"Howdy!" I said, offering my hand. "Nice to meet you. Matt Schoaff, truck driver, Buffalo."

"Doctor Martha Jones, MD. Currently with Torchwood, formerly with UNIT, and before that, I was with _him_." She shook my hand politely, while giving the Doctor an evil glare. He avoided eye contact as he looked around the room.

"You were _with_ him? Like..."

"Like _you're_ with him. Just a couple of traveling buddies." She had a bit of an edge to her voice as she said that. "Where'd he take you? To meet Shakespeare?"

I shook my head. "Edison."

"Edison? Nice one. _I_ never got to meet Edison."

"Oh, please, Martha. Edison would have tried to seduce you or put you to work in the kitchen," the Doctor said, defensively.

"_Shakespeare_ tried to seduce me. And _you_ put me to work in the kitchens." She strutted off in a huff, her backside looking glorious as it bounced from side to side in that tight black rubber. The Doctor didn't even notice, though. He was still looking around the room.

"Dude, she's totally into you," I said to the Doctor. "Wake up and smell the hormones."

"Martha? No! And don't ever, ever, _ever_ call me Dude. Ever."

"Dude? Dude. _Dude_. Dooooooood!" I did the two-handed Metal sign, with both fists together and the pinkies raised.

"Stop it!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Just stop!"

"You know she likes you. Why not?"

"Time Lord," he said, pointing at himself. "Human," he said, pointing at me. "You might as well start a romance with a mayfly. It'll be dead tomorrow." He suddenly started looking around the room again. "You know, I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with this room," he said, obviously changing the subject.

I looked around. "A room this big shouldn't have a cellar and a whole bunch of trap-doors?"

"No, that's not it."

"There's no windows or doors other than the huge sliding door? Not even a fire exit?"

"No, that's _definitely_ not it."

"What then?" I looked around at the empty room.

"There's no Rutans here! Let's go find one! Come on! _Vamanos_!" He started jogging down the hallway.

I groaned and yelled after him, "Do you _always_ have to _run_?!?"

My work boots made a loud squeaking noise as I ran on the polished tile floor of the hallway. The Doctor was somewhere ahead of me, but the hallway curved a few times and I couldn't see him. Judging by the sizes of the rooms, I guessed that we were in an empty factory of some kind. The hallway ended at a door that led out to a loading dock. A truck was parked at the dock with its back door open, and technical equipment inside of it. It looked like some sort of mobile command truck; probably Torchwood's.

There was no sign of the Doctor at the loading dock, nor did I see any of the Torchwood people in the truck. I turned to go back into the building and almost ran into Ianto.

"Ianto! Hi!" I took a few steps back, to give him personal space. "Did you bring me some coffee?"

"No," he said, flatly. "No coffee."

"Oh, well. Guess I'll have to settle for tea, then."

"No tea," he said. I noticed that he was carrying his automatic rifle again, as he pointed it at me.

"Oh, I beg to differ," the real Ianto said, as he came through the door behind the Rutan imposter. He had a metal teapot in his hand, which he quickly emptied over the Rutan's head. "There's _always_ tea!"

The Rutan screamed ear-piercingly as it dropped its weapon. Its human shape melted away as its tendrils flailed back and forth.

"And," Ianto added, as he brandished a steaming cup and saucer in his other hand. "I make the best damn coffee this side of the Atlantic!" He poured the coffee on the Rutan. Its screaming increased in volume.

I picked up the automatic rifle. It wasn't really what it looked like; it was some sort of Rutan-designed energy weapon. I pointed it at the suffering Rutan and pulled the trigger. It exploded in a mess of green goo.

Ianto and I looked at each other, covered with Rutan guts, and grinned. "Sorry about that," he said. "I'll go get you another coffee."

"Get the Doctor his tea, first. Or you'll end up like _this_ Ianto did."

---

Sitting around the kitchen table in the TARDIS, Jack and Martha explained the Rutans' plot. They were intending to kill President Obama and impersonate him to gain access to the other leaders of the world. Gwen and Ianto explained to me how they were so worried about interference from the Doctor that they had set a trap for him, by making his personal photograph collection available on the internet. Edison's Vitoscopic Recordings were thrown in to pique his interest, and the faked scene of the assassination almost guaranteed it. The Doctor made omelets with fresh eggs and fresh veggies from his hydroponic garden. Ianto's coffee really was the best coffee I'd ever had.

After we had all eaten and the Doctor had done some catching up with his friends, I stepped outside the TARDIS for a cigarette. I didn't really feel like was a part of the group, so I didn't mind distancing myself. Jack followed me out.

"Hey, can I bum a smoke?" he asked.

I handed him my pack. It had one cigarette left. "Last one," I said.

He lit the cigarette and took a huge drag on it. "American cigarettes," he said, appreciatively. "These things will kill you, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Did you ever figure out why you can't die?"

"Oh, yeah, long time ago. Thousands of years ago, from my perspective."

"And?"

"It was a goddess. A girl named Rose who looked into the heart of the TARDIS and came out with the power to make men immortal, turn monsters to dust, and grafitti her name across space and time. And she had a _great_ bottom." He smiled broadly.

I nodded. Anything seemed possible, now. I finished my cigarette and ground it out beneath my boot. I looked at the butt, blackened and broken on the floor. I coughed out some phlegm as I headed back into the TARDIS.

"Enjoy the cigarette, Jack. It's my last one."

---

We said our good-byes and I exchanged email addresses with the Torchwood gang. Jack made me promise to send him some chicken wings. "As hot as possible," he said. I knew just the place to order them from.

Martha insisted on giving the Doctor a big hug, and Jack joined in, pinning her in between them. Suddenly everybody was hugging the Doctor, except me.

"Matt!" he yelled. "Get over here!"

I shook my head. "You're on your own, Time Lord."

He looked hurt. "No, I'm not. I've got _you_. _All_ of you." The others loosened their grip on the skinny alien and beckoned me to join in the group hug. Reluctantly, I wrapped my arms around him, and I felt many more arms wrap around me. It felt good to be a part of the gang.

---

We landed in my living room, in the dark. I watched my phone suddenly change its date and time to 5:01 AM, Saturday, February 27th, 2010.

"When I say 'go,' go. Head straight to your bedroom and don't come out until you hear yourself knock. You remember what happens next, right?"

"Yeah. I wait until I leave with my daughter and then I walk over to where I left my car," I recited. "By the time I get there, I'll be gone, and so will you."

"Precisely! Now, are you ready?"

"No. Will I ever see you again?"

The Doctor stood by the door of the TARDIS, ready to open it. "Of course, you will! Actually, probably not. Sorry. I have a tendency to ..." he waved his hands back and forth, making his fingers wobble, "... flit about haphazardously. Like a flutterby. Maybe you'll see me. Maybe I'll see you."

I took off my great-great-grandfather's coat, and handed it to him. "Here, you take this. It's a hundred times more stylish than the coat you're wearing."

"Thank you, Matt."

"Thank you, Doctor." I picked up my parka and hat from the railing beside me. "Ready?"

"Yes! And 3... 2... 1... go!"

We left the TARDIS. I heard the back door of the house closing as I saw another Doctor come in the front door. They both held their fingers to their lips and quickly tip-toed up the stairs behind me. I went into my bedroom as they headed down the hall to the computer room, whispering to each other.

"Who's there?" my wife asked, suddenly jumping up in bed.

"Just me, sweetie." I put my parka and hat on the floor of the closet where I was sure that 'me the former' wouldn't notice them in the morning. "I just had the weirdest and most wonderful experience."

"Without me?" She beckoned me to the bed.

I crawled into bed beside her. "Well, maybe not the _most_ wonderful. But it was definitely the weirdest. Let me tell you all about it."

---

The next time I saw the blue box, it was in my back yard again. I was surrounded by a dozen screaming little girls, who were running around the house like crazy people. My wife was bringing out the birthday cake when I glanced past her and spotted it through the kitchen window. I shook a couple of kids off my legs and ran out to the back yard.

I stood in front of the TARDIS in my shirt sleeves, shivering in the snow, and tentatively knocked. The Doctor opened the door, with a huge smile on his face. "Matt! I haven't seen you for _years_!"

"Years?" I felt confused, even though I knew that he was a time traveler.

"Well, technically, decades. But who's counting? I brought your daughter a birthday present!" He reached back into the TARDIS for something.

"Really? What did you get her?"

He pulled out a shovel and a map. "Buried treasure! Right here in your back yard!"

---

My wife and daughter were both a bit shy around the Doctor, when I first introduced him. After all, he _had_ caused quite a bit of confusion in our household lately. But Mary and her friends really liked the idea of a treasure hunt. They quickly made pirate costumes for themselves and the Doctor, which he gladly put on when ordered to do so by the Dread Pirate Captain Bloody Mary. He gave her a hearty salute and volunteered to be the crew-member in charge of carrying the shovel.

They marched around the yard until the map led them to a spot in the corner of our yard. The Doctor started digging a hole. Within a few moments he had retrieved a small mason jar from beneath the frozen ground. I saw him open it and give my daughter something out of it. She ran inside the house to show us what they had found. It was the Baden Gulden coin, visibly aged.

My eyes started to well with tears as I heard the TARDIS engines buck and heave against the fabric of space, pushing its way into the time vortex. I knew that I would probably never see him again.

---

The next time I saw the blue box, it was a long ways away. I had trouble seeing it, even with my glasses. I wasn't even sure it was there, and had to stare out at the crowd for a few minutes before I was sure of it. There were almost a hundred million people gathered on the Mall for this momentous occasion, so I doubted that I would be able to see the Doctor, himself.

I looked over at my nephew, who looked very handsome in his black robes. His red hair shone in the sun, as he faced my daughter and held the bible in front of him. She placed her right hand on the bible and raised her left hand, then quickly reversed the positions of her hands. I knew she was nervous.

"I," my nephew started, "Mary Elizabeth Schoaff,"

"I, Mary Elizabeth Schoaff," she repeated.

"Do solemnly swear,"

I looked at my son-in-law. He was a good man, even if I _could_ take him in a fight. Really, I could.

"Do solemnly swear,"

"That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,"

I looked over at my grandson, all twenty-five years of him. He was seated behind his mother, with about a dozen different web-based devices attached to his clothing. I knew that he was webcasting the inauguration live, to every planet connected to the internet.

"That I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,"

"And will to the best of my ability,"

I looked out at the sea of faces. Thousands of arms waved to us. I wondered how many of them had ever eaten an Original Cheeseburger Sandwich. In every restaurant I prominently displayed a copy of the 1901 newspaper article about the electrocuted policeman and the mysterious half-eaten sandwich found beside his body.

"And will to the best of my ability,"

"Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

"Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." She finished her oath, and the crowd roared with applause. I turned down my hearing aid. Somebody tapped me on my shoulder, and I turned to look behind me.

Captain Jack Harkness stood there, looking only slightly older. Beside him stood the Doctor, who hadn't aged a day. He was wearing my great-great-grandfather's coat. They both gave me a thumbs-up, then joined the applause.

---

I never saw that blue box again.

It was March the Twelfth, 2079. My nurse told me so, so it had to be true. It was my birthday, again. I was tired of birthdays.

They wheeled me into the activity room, where some of the younger residents were allowed to have some cake. They even sang to me, in seven different languages. Halfway through the last verse, it seemed like they reverted to English to finish up the birthday song. I waved my fingers to keep time, half-heartedly. I wasn't allowed to have any cake.

They told me I had a visitor. I hadn't had any visitors for a long time. My family were all old or dead, or living on other worlds. Nobody had time for an old man like me anymore. The nurses helped me get back in bed, and told me they would send the visitor in as soon as I was ready.

He came in without a sound, and sat by my bedside. "Hello, Matt," he said.

"Howdy, Doc," I said. "I never thought I'd see you again." He looked a little older, but that may have just been the harsh lights on his sad face.

"I had to say good-bye, you know. And... Clive sent a present."

"Who's Clive?"

He gave me a huge smile, and smashed a brown egg over my forehead. The yolk dripped down my face and onto my neck. It was cold and uncomfortable. "_Clive the Chicken, of course_!" The Doctor jumped up and started dancing like a chicken.

I started laughing, and flapped my arms weakly in mimicry of him. He ran out of my room and down the hall, waving his elbows and clucking like a chicken.

And that was the last I saw of him.

**THE END**


End file.
